Program

Elena Raviola is Torsten and Wanja Söderberg Professor in Design Management and leadear of the research centre Business and Design Lab. Her research explores how design, technology, and materiality shape organizing and innovation, with a particular interest in creative industries, digital transformation, and collaborative forms of knowledge production. She has published extensively in organization studies and works at the intersection of management, design, and cultural production.

Otto von Busch is Professor of Integrated Design at Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York. His research and practice explore the intersections of design, fashion, craft, and social movements, with a particular focus on participatory design, commoning, and collective forms of making. Combining academic research with collaborative practice, his work investigates how design can support new modes of organizing, learning, and social transformation.

Lara Monticelli is an economic sociologist and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Sociodigital Futures at the University of Bristol. Her research examines contemporary capitalism and the ways alternative futures are imagined, contested and prefigured by various social actors. She has published extensively on the topic of prefigurative politics and prefigurative movements. She co-founded SASE’s “Alternatives to Capitalism” research network in 2017. Her current work explores how powerful corporate actors, particularly Big Tech, shape dominant imaginaries of capitalism and its futures.

Luca Pareschi is Associate Professor of Organization Studies at the University of Bologna. His research focuses on organizing in cultural and creative industries, with a particular focus on craft, creative work, and the management of arts and cultural organizations. His work brings together organization studies and cultural sociology to examine how material practices, communities, and cultural values shape alternative forms of organizing, work and production.

Édouard Jourdain is a French political philosopher whose work focuses on anarchist thought, democracy, the commons, and contemporary political theory. He is the author of several books on anarchism, self-government, and collective forms of political organization, and regularly contributes to public debates on democratic participation and social movements. His research explores how alternative political traditions can inform contemporary practices of organizing and collective action.

Patrizia Zanoni is Full Professor of Work and Organization at the School of Social Sciences of Hasselt University, Belgium. Her research draws from various traditions of critical theory to examine how difference and inequality are produced in and across capitalist organizations. She has also published on anti- and post-capitalist alternatives, and on collective organizing for social justice from within academic institutions. She is currently researching the changing infrastructures for the circulation of labour based on the empirical case of logistics, and preparing a book proposal on how the Marxist Renaissance can be used to advance a new generation of critical diversity studies. 

Poveglia per Tutti was founded in 2014 in response to plans to privatize the Venetian island of Poveglia. Bringing together thousands of members, the association advocates for the island to remain a common good under forms of collective stewardship and public use. Since its foundation, Poveglia per Tutti has organized public assemblies, volunteer initiatives, cultural events, and advocacy campaigns, becoming one of Italy's most prominent civic movements dedicated to the protection and collective governance of common goods.

La Perla workers' collective

Between 2024 and 2025, the workers of La Perla — the historic Bologna luxury lingerie company — organized against the company's collapse under speculative ownership. A predominantly female workforce mobilized to prevent liquidation, bringing their case from the factory to Rome and the European Parliament and building alliances with unions, institutions, and civil society. The campaign concluded with the reinstatement of the entire workforce under new ownership. It offers a contemporary example of collective labour organization in the fashion and luxury sector, and of the terms on which questions of labour rights, dignity, and skilled work are contested there

Fabio “Kenobit” Bortolotti is an Italian musician and digital activist. After working as a video game journalist and translator, he began performing worldwide with a Game Boy under the stage name Kenobit. He is the co-founder of Livello Segreto, one of Italy’s leading Mastodon instances, and promotes the Fediverse and free software. Through his Assalto alle piattaforme project, he explores the problems associated with mainstream social media and experiments with ethical, self-managed, and self-hosted alternatives.

MACAO emerged in Milan in 2012 through the occupation of the Torre Galfa skyscraper, before establishing itself in the former Slaughterhouse of Porta Vittoria. Since then, it has become one of Italy's best-known experiments in self-organized cultural production, bringing together artists, researchers, cultural workers, and activists to explore alternative ways of producing, governing, and sustaining culture. At the conference, MACAO will discuss Archiviare l'ingovernabile (Archiving the Ungovernable), a collective publication that documents and reflects on more than a decade of experiments in autonomous cultural organization, institutional critique, and communing.

Làbas is a self-managed social and cultural centre based in Bologna. Founded in 2012 with the occupation of the former Caserma Masini, it has developed projects spanning mutual aid, housing, welfare, cultural production, education, and community organizing. Following its eviction from the Caserma Masini in 2017, the collective continued its activities across the city before reopening in Vicolo Bolognetti. Today, Làbas hosts a wide range of social, cultural, and educational initiatives, working in collaboration with local associations, institutions, and civic organizations