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). In Belgium, he published a best-selling interview transcript, with Jean Lievens, ‘De Wereld Redden, met peer to peer naar een post-kapitalistische samenleving’, which is nearing its third printing after a few weeks (February 2014).

Michel Bauwens is a member of the Board of the Union of International Associations (Brussels), advisor to Shareable magazine (San Francisco), to Zumbara Time Bank (Istanbul) and ShareLex. He is also scientific advisor to the “Association Les Rencontres du Mont-Blanc, Forum International des Dirigeants de l’Economie Sociale et Solidaire” (2013-) and in the Advisory Board for the ‘Fourth International Conference on Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity’. He functioned 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. He writes editorials for Al Jazeera English [1]. He is listed at #82, on the Post-Carbon Institute (En)Rich list . Currently (2013), Michel Bauwens is research director of the transition project towards the social knowledge economy, an official project in Ecuador (see floksociety.org).

In the first semester of 2014, Michel Bauwens was research director of the floksociety.org research group, which produced the first integrated Commons Transition Plan for the government of Ecuador, in order to create a ‘social knowledge economy’, with fifteen associated policy papers. One version of the plan is available here.

Michel currently lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, has taught at Payap University and Dhurakij Pandit University’s International College, as well as IBICT, Rio de Janeiro. He is a founding member of the Commons Strategies Group, with Silke Helfrich and David Bollier, organizing major global conferences on the commons and its economics. In his first business career, Michel worked for USIA, British Petroleum, riverland Publications, Belgacom, and created two internet start-ups, respectively on intranet/extranets (E-Com) and interactive marketing (KyberCo), which were sold to Alcatel and Tagora Holdings.