Michel Bauwens
Founder, Director, P2P Foundation Michel Bauwens is the founder and director of the P2P Foundation. He is a researcher and author of works such as Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy. He is an early pioneer in exploring the significance of the internet for business and governance, and has lectured at Yale, Harvard, Cambridge, and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences
About this speaker
Bauwens is the author of the academic works Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy and Peer to Peer: The Commons Manifesto. He also published two books in his native languages for France and Belgium (Dutch and French).
In 2014, he was the research director of the team which put forward an integrated Commons Transition Plan for the Ecuadorian government and has also produced a similar type of plan for the city of Ghent in Belgium.
For over a decade he has been promoting a commons-centric economy as the successor to capitalism through his influence on leading activists and by diffusing these ideas to the public. In particular, he has helped to develop leading-edge ideas in peer production, new regulatory frameworks, and strategies for making the transition from capitalism to a commons-centric successor system that would respect planetary limitations.
As co-creator of the documentary Technocalyps, he brought together his interests in business, technology, and spirituality to explore transhumanism and other non-religious attempts to achieve transcendence. In 2019, he ran symbolically as a civil society candidate on the Flemish Green Party slate for the European Union Parliament.