Us, our allies and referents

Common Ecologies is

…a platform for movement learning. We organize courses, discussions, encounters, co-learning processes and programmes, and make podcasts. We work for people, groups and organizations that struggle (or want to struggle) for socio-ecological transformation and justice. Our work is based out of different locations in Europe (mostly Austria, Germany, Spain, Italy at the moment), linking to a network of allies, collaborators and referents in different places (mostly Europe and Latin and North America, our various places of origin). It matters to us that our work is situated and that we share common spaces of embodied encounter close to where we live, but we’re avid internationalists and mobile/migrant subjects who carry a great desire to translate – between geographical contexts as well as spheres of thinking, living and struggle. We work mostly in English but put a lot of energy into translating useful knowledges between different languages and contexts, often into English. We understand ecology as a common terrain of struggle, shared across a myriad communities and movements. We want to foster common notions, perspectives and infrastructures, without reducing difference. We also understand our work as being about movement ecologies, about cultures of care and justice that always think the environmental and the social together. We started in 2020 and have since been growing and evolving, in an open-ended process that will lead us down many experimental paths and collective processes, with our aim being to find sustainable forms of working and learning without turning into an NGO.

Who we are

Common Ecologies is built of a core team that sustains our infrastructure as well as plans and coordinates our activities; and of acompañantes as people who accompany us in specific strands or processes. Some people shift between being in the core team and being acompañantes, from time to time. We’re currently expanding our core team and will be updating the website with more biographies soon.

Core team:

Manuela Zechner – Manu is a researcher and facilitator focused on the intersections of feminism, ecology, micropolitics and institutional transformation. She’s been politicized in precarity, feminist and migrant solidarity struggles in the UK, Austria and Spain, and is into community, care and municipalist organizing. Manu facilitates workshops, collective research and experimental education processes – across movements, cultural spaces, schools and the university, often editing books and making radio/podcasts. She recently published ‘Commoning Care&Collective Power’ (transversal texts), co-produces the Earthcare Fieldcast, and is building a Future Archive since 2005. At Common Ecologies, Manu does a lot of coordination, visioning, facilitation and sustaining work, having been a co-founder holding together the structure, and is currently particularly engaged in the Earthcare, Curriculum and Movement Infrastructures strands.

Bue Rübner Hansen – Bue is a researcher, teacher and theorist interested in questions of ecology, social reproduction, and movement tactics and strategies. He has participated in the Danish and British Student Movements, in the migrant solidarity movement, the municipalism movement in Barcelona, and the climate justice movement. He occasionally serves as a strategic advisor, and loves to develop and teach concepts and mapping tools that can enhance people’s own capacities to analyze situations and think strategically. Bue is a part of the editorial collective of Viewpoint Magazine, a US-based publication of theory and practice. Bue also co-founded Common Ecologies and does coordination, visioning and facilitation work, with an eager interest in engaging with ongoing debates – he’s currently active in the Ecosyndicalism and Magazine strands, as well as outgoing from the Earthcare strand.

Adriana Eysler – Adriana is a teacher and movement participant/organiser in renters and precarious worker struggles in the UK. At Common Ecologies, where she has been a fellow traveller of for a while, Adri does a lot of invaluable backend, organisational , coordinationand process design work, and is currently most engaged in the Curriculum strand.

Daniel Gutiérrez – Daniel is a movement researcher focused on the problem of workers’ organization, power, and strategy. In the United States, he was head steward of UAW Local 2865, and since moving to Berlin in 2015, he has been involved in Solidarity City Berlin and Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen. Along with Antje Dieterich, he is an organizing trainer at the Werkstatt für Bewegungsbildung and a co-host of Spadework podcast. He lives in Berlin. At Common Ecologies, which he was also part of envisioning, Daniel contributes delicious food and drink as well as energies for connecting eco and labour struggles, is active in the Ecosyndicalism and Magazine strands.

Michel Jungwirth – Michel is a berlin-based activist and organizer in antiracist and municipalist movements and occasional facilitator as part of the Werkstatt für Bewegungsbildung. Michel has been a fellow traveller of Common Ecologies for a while, doing important infrastructural and bookkeeping work, and is most active in the Movement Infrastructures strand.

…more biographies will be added here as we update our website in autumn 2023.

Current acompañantes:

Nelly Alfandari, Antje Dieterich, and others (list will be completed soon)

Our advisors

(list in progress)

Katharine Ainger, Port Bou
Rosalie Arendt, Berlin
Valery Alzaga, London
Camille Barbagallo, Essex
Stefania Barca, Santiago de Compostela
Kylie Benton-Connell, Sydney
Nic Beuret, Essex
Kevin Buckland, Barcelona
Uli Brand, Vienna
Carlos Delclos, Barcelona
Melissa Garcia-Lamarca, Barcelona
Andrea Ghelfi, Florence
Christos Giovannopoulos, Athens
Janna Graham, Leicester/London
Amarata Herrero, Barcelona
Panagiota Kotsila, Barcelona
Lis Mason-Deese, US
Tomislav Medak, Zagreb
Keir Milburn, Leeds
Jason W. Moore, Binghamton, US
Rodrigo Nunes, Rio de Janeiro
Dimitris Papadopoulos, Nottingham
Nora Räthzel, Umeå/Catalonia
Isabelle Saint-Saëns, Paris
Sarah Schilliger, Bern
Attila Szocs, Cluj