As we were talking about possible summer schools or other types of
programs, this may be of interest.
***
Dear RC48 colleagues,
What if reimagining “alternatives” isn’t something we theorize or admire
from a distance—but something we practice, daily, in real-world living
laboratories?
AIBIA Italy is building such projects, and this summer we’re organizing a
Summer School in southern Italy (Molise) around that question. It’s a
12-week immersive, place-based program (modular participation possible)
located in and around a depopulating hilltop town navigating the
intertwined pressures of outmigration, economic precarity, and climate
stress.
This is not a tourism-style study abroad, nor a classic ethnographic field
school. AIBIA is inviting participants into a prefigurative process:
building an intentional educational community and living laboratory where
learning is embedded in daily life, collective responsibility, and the
practical work of reimagining how we provision, cooperate, produce, and
care for land, water, and each other - while sustaining communities under
pressure.
In the short term, the Summer School is a structured space of experiential
learning to develop “critical reimaginative” thinking—moving from immersive
critique and analysis toward the grounded reimagining of solutions to
larger issues. In the longer term, AIBIA’s project is to develop parallel
educational infrastructure: practice-based, place-rooted, self-managed, and
aimed at building livable futures beyond the assumptions of neoliberal
logics or its university systems.
The core block (June 22–July 17) combines:
1. a seminar-style week on inner areas, depopulation, alternative
economies, critical reimaginative theory, and lived change;
2. a dedicated science/field-methods week focused on human and
more-than-human relations (soils, slopes, water flows, vegetation/insect
life, microclimates) as lived realities; and
3. two weeks of structured visits and workshops with local families,
homesteads, producers, and initiatives—ending in a small-group
reimaginative output shared with partners.
Optional add-ons include an Italian language/cultural introduction block
(May 18–June 12) and a mentored research/field-practice block (July 20–Aug
14). Exact fees will be confirmed once cohort size and logistics are
finalized; a need-based scholarship structure is planned.
With this email, we are asking for expressions of interest from students
and faculty interested in participating.
Please forward the attached 2-page overview to relevant advanced
undergraduate and graduate lists (and to students working at the
intersection of social change, political ecology, and “actually existing
alternatives”).
Students and others can express interest by emailing aibia.global(a)gmail.com by
January 31, 2026 (short intro + why they want to participate).
All the best,
Tim Weldon
AIBIA (Italy / Global)
--
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*A few publication links
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jU9JWDD1RGpDX1yN6KpYZFXRxARmdOPQ/edit?u…>*
*Rod Bush: Lessons from a Radical Black Scholar on Liberation, Love, **and
Justice*
Open access download for teaching purposes
<https://www.okcir.com/product/rod-bush-lessons-from-a-radical-black-scholar…>
https://rodbush.org/
Eternal and infinite love for you, yours & the ongoing struggle
for dignity, justice, wisdom and peace.
