The brief “who we are” accounts below are organised on a national basis and list teams and individual researchers who are actively working and publishing on foundational economy themes.

Austrian researchers

Together with like-minded colleagues, the Austrian team co-founded the “Competence Centre for infrastructure Economics, Public Services and Social Provisioning”,a network of researchers and research institutions to advance foundational thinking and enable exchange and cooperation between researchers and representatives of regional and local government, social partners, businesses and civil society actors. The Competence Center works in close cooperation with the International Karl Polanyi Society, a think tank aiming at “putting the economy in its place”. The research agenda of the Competence Center and the Austrian team focuses on deepening the foundational approach by rethinking the economy, specifying the diverging logics of different economic sectors, seeking to embed foundational thinking more thoroughly into a biophysical reality marked by multiple ecological crises, and emphasising unpaid care work as an essential element of our shared foundations. In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, a report on the Austrian “Key performers of everyday life” mapped out the essential workforce, including its gendered nature and spatial distribution, and helped to redefine and shift existing frames around (economic) valuation and performance.

Leonhard Plank is Senior Scientist at the Department of Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy at TU Wien. Andreas Novy is professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien), Institute for Multi-Level Governance and Development (MLGD). Richard Bärnthaler has been university assistant at WU Wien, Institute for MLGD (until December 2023) and since then he is a Lecturer in Ecological Economics at the University of Leeds. Astrid Kirsch is a Postdoctoral Research
Fellow at the Global Centre on Healthcare and Urbanisation at Oxford University.

Leonhard Plank, leonhard.plank@tuwien.ac.at
Andreas Novy, andreas.novy@wu.ac.at
Richard Bärnthaler, richard.baernthaler@wu.ac.at
Astrid Krisch, astrid.krisch@kellogg.ox.ac.uk

Belgian researchers

A handful of Belgium-based researchers, all embedded in Cosmopolis: Centre for Urban Research (Vrije Universiteit Brussels) have commenced contributing to foundational economy thinking a few years ago. Things started with the organization of the Second Foundational Economy Colloquium in Brussels in 2019 organized by David Bassens, Sarah De Boeck, and Michael Ryckewaert. Since then, David, who is a Professor of Economic Geography at Cosmopolis, has been engaging with foundational thinking seeking to further the foundational agenda. The Covid-19 crisis urged a further embrace of foundational thinking for the Belgians, with David Bassens and Sarah De Boeck editing a volume on the foundational economy in Belgium, bringing together expertise regarding foundational sectors that previously had little common frame. This book entitled ‘The Essential Economy: an Engine for Social-Ecological Transition’ was published in 2022. Sarah has, meanwhile, finalized her Doctoral Dissertation where she made an argument about the foundational properties of the construction sector. Since then, Sarah has moved into policy consultancy, but new researchers have started to engage with the Foundational Economy. Jasmin Baumgartner, who is currently writing a dissertation focuses on the intersections of the foundational economy and the circular economy and Amy Phillips, who is a senior researcher at Cosmopolis and GIS expert, investigates the accessibility of green spaces as a matter of foundational liveability. Nele Aernouts, who is a professor of spatial planning at Cosmopolis, has contributed to the Belgian book and is now thinking through how housing systems can be reconnected to their foundational purpose.

Nele Aernouts, nele.aernouts@vub.be

David Bassens, david.bassens@vub.be

Jasmin Baumgartner, jasmin.baumgartner@vub.be

Sarah De Boeck, sarah.deboeck@ideaconsult.be

Amy Philips, amy.philips@vub.be

Michael Ryckewaert, michael.ryckewaert@vub.be

British researchers

A small British team, who work together continuously, have played a key role in the development of foundational thinking. They worked with others in the Centre for Research in Socio Cultural Change on the original Manifesto for the Foundational Economy in 2013 and on the Foundational Economy book of 2018. More recently, they jointly authored the Nothing Works book in 2023 which owes much to their work in the action research agency Foundational Economy Research Ltd at . Julie Froud and Sukhdev Johal are professors respectively at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester and the School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London. Colin Haslam and Karel Williams are emeritus professors at Queen Mary and the University of Manchester and Queen Mary. They have been joined by Dr Luca Calafati, an environmentalist and urbanist who leads on Foundational Economy Research Ltd projects in these areas.  

Luca Calafati, l.calafati@campus.unimib.it

Julie Froud, julie.froud@manchester.ac.uk

Colin Haslam, c.haslam@qmul.ac.uk

Sukhdev Johal, s.johal@qmul.ac.uk

Karel Williams, williamskarel@hotmail.com

Two senior British academics are also prime movers in foundational research and have profile as public intellectuals in Wales w/here foundational thinking has some influence. Professor Ian Rees Jones is the director of the ESRC funded WISERD research centre and co- editor of the 2022 book Foundational Economy and Citizenship.  Professor Kevin Morgan of Cardiff University is the author of the Public Plate book on food in public institutions which is forthcoming in the Manchester Capitalism book series. 

Ian Jones,  JonesIR4@cardiff.ac.uk

Kevin Morgan, MorganKJ@cardiff.ac.uk  

Italian researchers

A group of Italian researchers has been active since 2014, initiated by Angelo Salento (a visiting researcher at the University of Manchester at that time). Alongside Filippo Barbera, Angelo progressively expanded the Italian collective, involving more than thirty individuals in research activities. In 2016, the Italian group published the book “Il capitale quotidiano. Un manifesto per l’economia fondamentale” (Rome: Donzelli), paving the way for the dissemination of the foundational approach in Italy. In 2022, “Prima i fondamentali. L’economia della vita quotidiana tra profitto e benessere” (Milan: Fondazione Feltrinelli) was released, a book with the participation of more than 30 co-authors exploring the dynamics of seven key sectors of the foundational economy in Italy. In addition to these books, numerous articles and special issues in Italian journals dedicated to foundational economy issues have been produced. The group has also been highly active in organizing conferences and seminars. Today, in Italy, the foundational economy approach is widely used not only in economic sociology but also in urban planning and the discourse on social policies.

Currently, the most active members of the Italian network are: Angelo Salento
(angelo.salento@unisalento.it); Filippo Barbera (filippo.barbera@unito.it); Joselle Dagnes
(joselle.dagnes@unito.it).