Join us for a thought-provoking symposium featuring Ruth Meinzen-Dick, Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Ruth is a renowned scholar whose research spans governance of natural resources, agricultural development, and gender issues, with a strong focus on the management of commons and innovative field methodologies. 

This symposium, titled Aspiring Commons – (Re)discoveries and Learning Opportunities from the Global South, aims to explore how practices from the Global South can inspire and inform collective action initiatives in Europe. The event will also include presentations and a panel discussion on how transdisciplinary approaches, reciprocity between academics and practitioners, and innovative frameworks can address wicked problems and support sustainable resource management. 

This event will take place at Campus Woudestein, Erasmus University Rotterdam. If you would like to attend, sign up through the form.

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About the keynote speaker

Ruth Meinzen-Dick is a Senior Research Fellow at IFPRI, where she leads groundbreaking research on natural resource governance, agricultural development, and gender. She has extensive transdisciplinary research experience in using qualitative and quantitative research methods. Her work focuses on two broad (and sometimes interrelated) areas: how institutions affect how people manage natural resources, and the role of gender in development processes. This has led her to study land and water policy, property rights, collective action and other governance arrangements, games for experiential learning, and the impact of development interventions, drawing on fieldwork in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. 

Ruth is a co-creator of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) and recipient of the Elinor Ostrom Collective Governance of the Commons 2019 Senior Scholar Award. She holds a PhD in development sociology from Cornell University. 

Presentations

• Rosalba Icaza Garza, Associate Professor Global Politics, Feminisms and Decoloniality at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. With her presentation she will dive into the question: Can we respond to the possibility of an ethical life that is not structurally implicated with the suffering and the consumption of the life of earth and others? 
• Julie-Marthe Lehmann, researcher and founder of Spaarkracht. She became intrigued by the concept of savings groups in the Global South and conducted action-oriented research on their potential effects in the Netherlands, culminating in her dissertation “Balancing the social and financial side of the coin.“
• Fabio de Castro, senior lecturer at CEDLA, the Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam. He is coordinator of the Master Programme in Latin American Studies and chair of the Netherlands Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He will will discuss how innovative practices, social interactions, and institutions emerging within various forest-based economies in Brazil can serve as a source of inspiration for other regions in fostering more inclusive and sustainable value chains.
• Taslim Alade is a senior lecturer at the Business-Society Management Department, Rotterdam School of Management (RSM).

On the panel

• Ruth Meinzen-Dick.
• Cee Marlin, practitioner with more than 20 years of experience in sustainability and environmentally friendly projects and agriculture in the Global South, with special focus on the Caribbean.
• Diana Suhardiman, professor of Natural Resource Governance, Climate and Equity at Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University.
• Taslim Alade, senior lecturer at the Business-Society Management Department, Rotterdam School of Management (RSM), focusing on impact-driven education and research in a complex and interconnected world.
• Moderation: Lukas Held, CollectieveKracht project coordinator.

Location

Erasmus University Rotterdam (map), Sanders Building, room 0-01.