What's the project
about
Postgrowth S.A: Pontevedra is a citizen science project in social sciences that aims to co-create the city of the future, an ecological and sustainable city designed for communal living and enjoyment. The project involves students and teachers from 1st year of high school in the municipality of Pontevedra. Through the investigation of various local case studies, students and teachers will participate in researching creative solutions to address the ecological and social challenges we currently face.
The project begins in September 2023 and concludes with the participation of students and teachers in the 10th International Degrowth Conference and the 15th Conference of the European Society for Ecological Economics, which will take place in the city of Pontevedra in June 2024. Throughout the course, there will be a combination of in-person sessions and ongoing guidance from the work team at the University of Vigo. These sessions will lay the groundwork for students and teachers to collaborate on the design of the research protocol, data collection, analysis and interpretation, as well as the dissemination and transfer of results. The latter will primarily take place within the framework of the Youth Space of the conference.
Therefore, the project offers a unique opportunity to involve students in a real research process within the context of a project funded by European funds (ERC Starting Grant PROSPERA, GA 947713). At the end of the course, all individuals involved will receive their participation accreditation in the project. Concurrently, the citizen science process will be monitored to generate knowledge about the citizen science itself, and it will be captured in a documentary video. This will facilitate its communication and enable the reproducibility of this pioneering project in other cities.
If you want to learn more, you can visit the conference website.
In the last decade the concept of circular economy has gained prominence in political and corporate discourse around the world. In this paper we have dis- cussed how this idea, in the formulation promoted by European institutions and think tanks is problematic for a number of physical, economic and pol- itical reasons. We claim that the biggest shortcoming of the current CE dis- course is represented by its apolitical framing.