Rotary Utrecht celebrates its 100th anniversary on Friday 10 March with an inspiring afternoon on ‘doing good’ in this day and age. The programme includes short lectures by interesting speakers, discussions, impressive live music, video clips of social initiatives and a closing drink.

The afternoon will take place at a special location in Utrecht: Gasthuis Leeuwenberg. Walk-in starts at 13:00 and the programme starts at 14:00. For more information about the afternoon and the speakers, click here.

On 17 February Prof Tine De Moor publicly accepted her appointment as professor of Social Enterprises and Institutions for Collective Action at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University with an inaugural lecture entitled Shakeholder society? Social Enterprises, citizens and collective action in the community economy.

How to deal with the grand challenges of our current society? We know what to do, often discuss who should be taking the lead in this (governments? companies? consumers?) and there are many technological innovations that could help but we still fall short of making our economy more regenerative. Can a focus on an economy steered by the needs and collective action of citizens help us forward? Do citizens want to be involved and if so what happens already today? What are the benefits but also potential negative effects and pitfalls of enabling cooperative social enterprises? In “Shakeholder society?” Tine De Moor looks at the possibilities of bringing the roles of stakeholders and shareholders closer together.

If you would like to (re)watch the lecture, you can do so below!

On 15 March, Herenboeren’s Winter Webinar will take place with the theme ‘Participation of Members’. A key pillar of the Herenboerderij is social connectedness. The local community makes these cooperatives possible and is the buyer of the products. But how do we ensure sustainable connection and participation of cooperative members on the Herenboerderij? This question is the focus of the webinar. Two interesting speakers will give their insights during the webinar. Christiaan Bikker, project officer at the HAS, will share his findings on sustainable participation of cooperative members. And Professor Tine De Moor, initiator of CollectieveKracht, will talk about the resilience and development of citizen collectives.

The webinar is in Dutch and free and will take place from 20:00 to 21:30. Registration is mandatory and can be done via the registration form. More information can be found here.

Are you interested in studying historical forms of institutions for collective action and their modern-day counterparts, such as citizen collectivities, cooperatives, and commons? Join our Institutions for Collective Action research team and work on the UNICA project, which aims to build a unified theory for the development and resilience of such institutions for Europe over the past millennium.

On 31 January dr. Bram van Helvoirt gave a very interesting presentation as part of our open seminar series. Van Helvoirt is a lecturer and researcher Future Food Systems at HAS Green Academy and his current research focuses on agrarian and food collectives, including the concept of ‘food as a common(s)’.

On Tuesday 17 January, Dr. Nadia von Jacobi and Sara Lorenzini were the guests in our open seminar series. Von Jacobi is an Assistant Professor and Sara Lorenzini a PhD candidate at the Department of Economics and Management, University of Trento. Their interest lies predominantly in ways to ‘amplify’ citizen knowledge in the management of natural capital. Von Jacobi and Lorenzini talked about forests as commons.