Labour and P2P Activists Bio Page

Individual bio's to add in our Labor section.

Source: http://titanpad.com/networkedlabourconfirmed

Directory

Valery Alzaga Valery Alzaga (Mexico City/Berlin) is a labour organizer and a migrant rights activist. Since 1999 she has organized with the Justice for Janitors Campaign throughout the US, UK and Holland. She has also worked as an organizing coordinator in different cities throughout Europe, Turkey and South Africa and is currently in advising various unions including IGMetall and Verdi (in Germany) organizing wind sector and outsourced airport service workers respectively. Her main interest is to develop new forms of bio-unionism and effective organizing and campaign strategies for newly emergent industries. She is currently working for the Change to Win - European Organizing Center Articles by Valery AlzagaJustice for Janitors campaign: open-sourcing labour conflicts against global neo-liberalism

Walter Baier Walter Baier is an economist in Vienna and Coordinator of the network transform! europe.

Selcuk Balamir I previously studied design practice in France, and I am currently a PhD Fellow at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, researching the sustainability of 'postcapitalist design cultures'. My main interests are the intersections between creative production, radical politics and ecological systems.� I am also involved in global climate justice mobilisations since 2009. Richard Barbrook Dr. Richard Barbrook is the author of Pluto Press’s Spring 2007 release Imaginary Futures and has also written a number of highly influential essays on the clash between commerce and cooperation within the Internet, including ‘The Hi-Tech Gift Economy’, ‘Cyber-communism’, ‘The Regulation of Liberty’ and, with Andy Cameron, ‘The Californian Ideology’, published in 1995 it was a controversial critique of the neo-liberal politics of Wired magazine. He has recently published a book on the social groups shaping the information society, The Class of the New (2006). During the early 1980s, he was involved in pirate and community radio broadcasting and helped establish Spectrum Radio, a multi-lingual station in London, and published extensively on radio issues. Between 1995 and 2005, he coordinated the pioneering Hypermedia Research Centre at the University of Westminster and was course leader of its MA in Hypermedia Studies, the first of its kind on offer in Britain. Educated at Cambridge, Essex and Kent Universities, Barbrook is currently a Senior Lecturer of Politics at the University of Westminster.

Michel Bauwens Michel Bauwens is the founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He has co-produced the 3-hour TV documentary Technocalyps with Frank Theys, and co-edited the two-volume book on anthropology of digital society with Salvino Salvaggio. Michel is currently Primavera Research Fellow at the University of Amsterdam and external expert at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (2008, 2012). Michel Bauwens is a member of the Board of the Union of International Associations (Brussels), advisor to Shareable magazine (San Francisco) and to Zumbara Time Bank (Istanbul). He functions as the Chair of the Technology/ICT working group, Hangwa Forum (Beijing, Sichuan), to develop economic policies for long-term resilience, including through distributed manufacturing. Michel writes editorials for Al Jazeera English [1] and is listed at #82, on the Post-Carbon Institute (En)Rich list, http://enrichlist.org/the-list/ Michel currently lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, has taught at Payap University and Dhurakij Pandit University's International College. He is a founding member of the Commons Strategies Group.In his first business career, Michel worked for USIA, British Petroleum, riverland Publications, Belgacom, and created two internet start-ups."

Marco Berlinguer "I am Italian. I worked as a researcher, director of research in various organizations, in political left, trade unions and social movements. I also contributed to create various international networks. Among these, Transform!, Networked Politics, L&G, WSF, EFS. I also worked in various moments as journalist. Since 2011, I moved to Barcelona, where I collaborate with the university IGOP at UAB. In this context, I have contributed to the creation of the "Escuela de los commons", an open platform of cooperation on the emerging paradigm of the commons. As journalist, since September 2012, I participated in the foundation and started to work for a new Italian daily: Pubblico. Some publications: "Beyond Social Economy", 2012. “Models emergents de sostenibilitat de continguts audiovisuals en l'era digital”, 2012. "Knowledge Is a Common Good. The Effects of the Open Source Movement on the Development of Politics and Society " 2010. "Networked Politics," 2007." George Defermos George N. Dafermos is an independent researcher, author, and freelance management/technology consultant, located in Crete, Greece. Currently, George works as an Internet instructor and consultant at go-online.gr (part of the wider EU Information Society programme), and lectures in Business Information Systems and Web Development at GLOBAL, which is the Campus of the University of Huddersfield in Crete. In addition, George is involved in several Internet-enabled non-profit projects, including the Common Good Public License [cgpl.org], Hyper(+)drome [hyperdrome.net], and opensource.gr. Most of George's writings are linked to fromhttp://hyperdrome.net/people/dafermos/writings.html" (email communicaton 13/2/2006)

Paolo Gerbaduo Paolo joined the Department of CMCI at King’s College London in September 2012 taking a post of Lecturer in Digital Culture and Society. Previously he had been an Associate Lecturer in Journalism and Communication, at the Media Department at Middlesex University, and an Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the American University in Cairo (AUC). Apart from his academic work Paolo has also acted as a journalist covering social movements, political affairs and an environmental issues, and as a new media artist exhibiting at art festivals and shows. He holds a PhD in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths College, where he worked under the supervision of Professor Nick Couldry.

Tweets and Streets: http://www.tweetsandthestreets.org/ Jonathan Gray Jonathan Gray is Director of Policy and Ideas at the Open Knowledge Foundation, where he coordinates policy and advocacy work to expand the digital commons of public information, research and culture. He studied Philosophy at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Social Sciences at the Open University and is currently doing research in Philosophy and the History of Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London. You can find out more about him on jonathangray.org. Melissa Gregg Melissa is a leading figure in the field of affect theory and work as the author of Cultural Studies’ Affective Voices (2006) and co-editor of The Affect Theory Reader (with Gregory J. Seigworth, Duke UP, forthcoming). Her writing on digital culture and labour has been published in a range of journals including Convergence, Continuum, Feminist Media Studies and Media International Australia. With Mark Andrejevic, Melissa convened one of the first graduate courses on digital labour post-web 2.0, “The Work of Media Consumption” at the University of Queensland. She currently teaches in the Gender and Cultural Studies Department at the University of Sydney where she is finishing two manuscripts on professional identity, friendship and labour: Work’s Intimacy (Polity, forthcoming 2010) and Broadcast Yourself: Presence, Intimacy and Community Online (with Catherine Driscoll). Ruben Martinez Member and co-fundator of ZZZINC, a cultural innovation platform based on Barcelona, and of Metropolitan Observatory of Barcelona. Researcher and professor of "public policy and culture" and of "innovation, culture and industry" at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). He is developing his PhD thesis at the Institute of Government and Public Policy (IGOP) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona on the relations between social innovation and the commons. Coordinator and member of the independent research project "Empresas del Procomún", about the relations between commons and economic models. Jeroen Merk Academically, I hold a PhD in International Relations from the University of Sussex, Brighton. My research interests lie at the crossroads of international relations, political economy, social movements, and the governance institutions of global industrial relations. I have been particularly concerned with analysing the shifting nature of worker-employer relations within local, national and global (supply-chain) contexts; the role of ethical standards as embodied in codes of conduct and other voluntary instruments in regulating business practices; and the combined (but uneven) emergence of cross-border networks of NGOs and trade unions keeping transnational corporations accountable for labour rights violations. I have published on these topics in peer-reviewed journals and academic books. Currently, I am collaborating with academics from different universities on related research projects Since 2003, I have been a research and policy coordinator at the International Secretariat of the Clean Clothes Campaign, a labour rights NGO with branches in 15 European countries and an extended network of partners in production countries. Here I obtained thorough expert knowledge on working conditions, private regulatory instruments and social movements activities in the spatially dispersed garment industry. Among other things, I am responsible for coordinating, planning and publishing research on the impact of private governance instruments on labour relations and working conditions. I have closely collaborated with unions, labour NGOs and researchers, mostly from South and South-East Asia, on these topics. Phobe Moore I am an active researcher and a full time, permanent lecturer in International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE) here at Salford University in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences. I have been teaching IR and IPE since September 2000 in the United Kingdom. My PhD is from Nottingham University and I finished it in 2004, and then I stayed in the UK. I won the Economics and Social Research Council (ESRC) Post-doctoral Fellowship, and carried out this Fellowship at the University of Manchester from 2004-5. The Fellowship requires one to create a programme of research, and I entitled mine ‘Vocational Training in East Asia: The Impact of Curricula Reform on Workers’. I then worked, on temporary contracts, at Lincoln University from 2005 – 7 in the centre for Policy Studies, and now, I have been based at Salford since August 2007. I have conducted field work in Seoul, Korea, a number of times, including in 2002, 2004, and 2009. I have acted on the Editorial Board for Capital and Class since 2006, and I co-edited the Special Issue 97 (2009), Parallel Visions of Peer Production with Dr Athina Karatzogianni. This is a groundbreaking Issue that is one of the first editions to ask ‘how Marxist are peer to peer ideals for production’? I am the Convenor for the International Political Economy Group (IPEG) of the British International Studies Association, and I am on the IPEG Book Prize judges panel. Robin Murray Robin Murray is an economist. He has alternated working for innovative economic programmes in local, regional and national governments, with academic teaching and writing. His recent work has focused on new waste and energy systems and on projects in the social economy. He was co-founder and later chair of Twin Trading the fair trade company and was closely involved in the companies it spun off, including Cafedirect, Divine Chocolate, Liberation Nuts and Agrofair UK. He is a Fellow of the Young Foundation, where he worked on social innovation, and an Associate of Co-operatives UK, for whom he wrote the strategic report Co-operatives in the Age of Google. He is currently a senior Visiting Fellow at the LSE and also teaches at the Schumacher College in Devon. Jakob Rigi Jakob Rigi, Born in Iran, Baluchistan, has a BSc from Stockholm University and a PhD from London University (SOAS). He has been associate professor at Central European University, Budapest, since 2008. He was an assistant professor at Cornell University 2002-2008. He also taught at SOAS (London University). He has hold research fellowships from Edinburg University (2000-2001), New York University (2004). He has widely published on Kazakhstan and Russia. His major publication on Kazakhstan is Post-Soviet Chaos: Violence and the Dispossession in Kazakhstan (London: Pluto Press), translated into Turkish and published by İletişim. His current research focuses on the role of knowledge and internet in the transformation of space, time, society and culture. Current Research Interests Political Economy of Peer Production and Communes; Political Economy of Social Media; Poltical and Cultural Economies of 3D Printing.The Internet based Public Sphere; Technological Activists, Grass-root Social Movements and Revolutions in the Middle East and the Former Soviet Territory; Internet and Social Movements; Capital, State and Sovereignty.

Johan Soderberg (Paris) I defended my PhD thesis entitled "Free software to open hardware: Critical theory on the frontiers of hacking" in March 2011, at the unit for Science and Technology Studies/Department of Sociology in Göteborg, Sweden. The discussant was Andrew Feenberg. My thesis was based on a field study of a group of wireless network activists in the Czech Republic. The activists had invented a machine called "Ronja". It enabled them to connect their computers through visible, red light. One idea behind building these computer networks was to replace a centralised communication infrastructure susceptible to surveillance and censorship. Ronja was, so to speak, a "darknet of light".

Free Software to Open Hardware – Critical Theory on the Frontiers of Hacking, avhandling, 2011. Allt Mitt är Ditt – Fildelning, Upphovsrätt, Försörjning, Atlas Förlag, 2008. Hacking Capitalism – The Free and Open Source Software Movement,Routledge, 2007.

Orsan Senalp Orsan Senalp is originally from Turkey. He is a social movement and labour activist, immigrant flex worker, and global political economist. Currently he lives in the Netherlands and promotes P2P Social Network Unionism. He founded grassroots advise service NetwOrganisation and initiated transnational P2P labour union GAIA. He actively participated in global water justice movement between 2007 and 2010, and since 2011 has been involved in 15M and Occupy movements, as well as European convergences like Joint Social Conference, Alter-Summit and Firenze 10+10. Sol Trumbo Sol Trumbo is an economist and political activist working for TNI since November 2012. He is focussing on the construction of a pan-European social movement to resist and provide alternatives to the current neoliberal EU policies. Sol has a BSc degree in Economic science from the Universidad de Valencia in Spain and a MSc in International Relations from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. He is activelly involved in the Indignados and Occupy movements, working towards the convergence with other resistances and struggles. Marcel van der Linden (born 1952) is director of research at the International Institute for Social History and holds a professorship dedicated to the history social movements at the University of Amsterdam. From 2005 to 2010, he was first president of International Social History Association, founded in Sidney in 2005 with current residency at Amsterdam. Marcel van der Linden is most recognized in his field for his approach of a "global labour history" which he has developed since the 1990s. Global labour history is seen by many scholars of labour studies as a new paradigm that wants to overcome both traditional labour history and the "new labour history" developed in the 1960s by scholars like Eric Hobsbawm and E.P. Thompson. Marcel van der Linden received an honorary doctor from the University of Oslo in 2008. Kees van der Pijl Kees van der Pijl is a fellow of the Centre for Global Political Economy and professor emeritus in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex. His publications include The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (new edition 2012, first published 1984), Transnational Classes and International Relations (1998), Global Rivalries from the Cold War to Iraq (2006), Nomads, Empires, States (2007) and The Foreign Encounter in Myth and Religion (2010). Hilary Wainwright Hilary Wainwright is a leading researcher and writer on the emergence of new forms of democratic accountability within parties, movements and the state. She is the driving force and editor behind Red Pepper, a popular British new left magazine, and has documented countless examples of resurgent democratic movements from Brazil to Britain and the lessons they provide for progressive politics. As well as TNI fellow, she is also Senior Research Associate at the International Centre for Participation Studies at the Department for Peace Studies, University of Bradford, UK and Senior Research Associate at International Centre for Participation Studies', Bradford University. She has also been a visiting Professor and Scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles; Havens Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison and Todai University, Tokyo. Her books include Reclaim the State: Experiments in Popular Democracy (Verso/TNI, 2003) andArguments for a New Left: Answering the Free Market Right (Blackwell, 1993). Wainwright founded the Popular Planning Unit of the Greater London Council during the Thatcher years, and was convenor of the new economics working group of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly from 1989 to 1994.

Peter Waterman Peter Waterman (London 1936) worked twice for international Communist organisations in Prague, the second time for the World Federation of Trade Unions. After experiencing the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia he left both the Comunist world and the world of Communism. He has written numerous academic papers, books and articles, as well as journalistic pieces, and been published in several languages. Since 1972 he has lived in The Hague, working at the Institute of Social Studies till 1998. He was editor of the Newsletter of International Labour Studies 1979-1990. In the 1980s he launched the international exchange on 'social movement unionism' (aka SMU or 'the new social unionism'). Since around 1985 he has been researching the new internationalisms, in both institutional and communication terms, with increasing concentration on online forms. In the 1990s he experimented with websites relating to new global labour and social movements seeking alternatives to capitalist and neo-liberal globalization. He has been a longtime critic of the social-liberal International Trade Union Confederation and the communist WFTU. Around 2005 he launched a 'Global Labour Charter Project' (so far as unsuccessful as the SMU launch was sucessful). He has written and published about the World Social Forum (WSF) and the global justice and solidarity movement more generally. He has shifted most of his publication activity from paper to the web. He is associated with 'Interface: A Journal of and for Social Movements' (online and copyleft), having recently co-edited a special issue on 'the global emancipation of labour'. He is active on 'UnionBook', longest-established open blogsite for international labour exchanges. He is currently completing his 'Itinerary of a Long-Distance Internationalist' and exploring different forms of online publication for this.

Marina Weisband (?) Weisband was born and raised in Kiev to a Jewish family. In 1994, she and her family moved to Wuppertal in Germany as Kontingentflüchtlinge (literally "Quota refugees"—these are foreigners admitted to Germany on humanitarian or compassionate grounds. Most Kontingentflüchtlinge from the former Soviet Union are Jewish.) She finished school in 2006 and studies psychology at the University of Münster. Currently, she is working on her diploma thesis. Weisband describes herself as a devout Jew and lives with her partner in Münster. Weisband joined the German Pirate Party in 2009. The Pirate Party won its first seats in a regional election in Berlin on 18 September 2011, gaining around 9% of the vote. In April 2012, with support from other senior Pirate Party figures, she called on members of her party to tackle antisemitism and right wing extremism within their own ranks. Der Spiegelsuggested that the Pirate Party needed to dispel a perception that it was a sympathetic environment for radical extremists. Shortly afterwards Weisband announced she would not be seeking re-election next month, citing the need to focus on studying for her degree. She did not rule out a return to politics after graduating.[1][2] Weisband is the Pirate Party's most recognised face, appealing particularly to younger voters with her "laid-back style". Her hobbies are drawing, painting, tango dancing and roleplaying games