This month, three postdoctoral researchers and eleven PhD candidates have started at ECCO. They will be working at various universities and universities of applied sciences to investigate how we can strengthen citizen collectives in societal transitions.
This interview with SEICA team members Professor Tine De Moor and Communications Advisor Tessa Moolenaar explores the role of citizen collectives in building resilient societies and strengthening the connection between academia and society.
The article examines how CollectieveKracht brings together citizen collectives, researchers, policymakers, and other stakeholders to facilitate knowledge exchange and collaboration. It highlights the importance of trust, reciprocity and long-term relationships in developing meaningful partnerships across these communities.
Against the backdrop of growing attention to engaged research and the societal impact of universities, the interview offers insights into the conditions that enable collective action to generate lasting societal value.
In their chapter, Cooperative Data in a Comparative Perspective: Avoiding Pitfalls for Robust Data Aggregation, written for Global Cooperative Economics and Movements, Véronique de Herde and Tine De Moor examine the methodological challenges of comparing and aggregating cooperative data across time and space. As an increasing number of research projects rely on comparative datasets to assess, for example, the societal impact of cooperatives, the authors analyse a broad corpus of historical cooperative data sources, ranging from registration records to federation data at the national and international levels.
Continue readingTogether with neighborhood businesses, municipalities, housing corporations, and health insurers, members of the SEICA research group are co-creating an innovative financing mechanism that integrates multiple funding streams. This aims to ensure sustainable funding for CBEs and guaranteed cost savings for the involved parties. This project is an initiative by DAZO and it is one of 25 projects awarded the Knowledge-in-Action (KIN) grant.
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On 9 July, A Dutch essay collection was launched with the title ‘Vuurproef voor democratie’. The volume brings together 18 essays by researchers, exploring the climate crisis as a challenge for democracy, the rule of law, and public governance. SEICA research group team members Tine De Moor and Lukas Held co-authored one of the essays.
On June 26th, the Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG) organized a knowledge exchange event. As part of the program, professor Tine De Moor (Erasmus University Rotterdam) gave a lecture titled: ‘Citizen collectives in action: stronger together with municipalities‘.
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On June 23, Prof. Ismael Vaccaro (CSIC) presented his research about the history of Catalan Commons. The presentation was titled “The Legal Transformations of the Commons in the Catalan Pyrenees: from the Middle Ages until the twenty-first century”.
Vaccaro presented his research on the complex legal history of the old commons, showing how their legal status has been profoundly transformed over time, while certain characteristics have persisted under new legal frameworks.
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As part of program for the ‘Week of Resilience’ at the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Safety Region (VRR) Professor Tine De Moor gave a lecture on the role of citizen collectives in enhancing regional resilience, titled: “Society as First Responder: Citizen Collectives as Critical Infrastructure for a Resilient Netherlands?”. They examined how initiatives such as energy cooperatives, care collectives, community enterprises, and neighborhood networks contribute to addressing crises and broader societal challenges.
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In 2025, citizen collective members of the CollectivePower platform (CollectieveKracht in Dutch) were interviewed regarding their archiving. What kinds of information do they preserve? How do they do it? What challenges do they encounter, and what support do they need?
Citizen collectives are a driving force behind social change. From energy cooperatives and care initiatives to food collectives and co-housing projects, they demonstrate how community spirit can be a powerful catalyst for change. But while they are building the future, something important risks being lost: the story of how they got there.
The stories, decisions, challenges, and successes of citizen collectives are valuable for both current and future initiatives. The history of how an initiative came into being, the steps it has taken, the partnerships it has formed, and the lessons it has learned together constitute an invaluable source of knowledge and inspiration.
This publication is part of the project Building a Unified Theory for the Development and Resilience of Institutions for Collective Action for Europe in the Past Millennium and the project Knowledge Brokering to Build the Memory of Dutch Citizen Collectives as part of the CollectieveKracht platform. Both projects are funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).
Continue readingIOS Platform Bottom-up Initiatives for Societal Change organised a research day at Utrecht University, facilitating the interdisciplinary sharing of expertise on their main research topics and to help to create (new) networks and collaborations. During the first session, several researchers presented their work on entrepreneurship-led sustainable development in Africa, which was followed by a ‘World Café: Building Change from the Bottom Up.
Professor Tine De Moor gave a lecture, titled ‘From grassroots to governance: the maturation of citizen collectives in the Netherlands’. In the lecture, she explored how these initiatives have grown into a diverse and influential movement shaping energy, housing, care and food systems through democratic governance, local stewardship and long‑term community orientation. Their evolution shows that such collectives are not a temporary trend, but a vital complementary governance form whose impact on just and sustainable transitions is increasingly visible across Dutch society.