This course is only available to members of the Ecofeminist Society, a research-backed online community founded by Dr. Asmae Ourkiya . The door is open until October 31st. Then the doors close, and the next moment to join as member will be in half year. You can learn more about the Ecofeminist Society and membership here. The study circle starts in January.
Why Economics, Why Now?
Care work has always been undervalued and unpaid. Feminist economists like Marilyn Waring named this in the 1980s, and thinkers like Gibson-Graham remind us that the economy was never just one thing: markets sit alongside gift economies, commoning and mutual aid. Now that war economies of rationing and scarcity are resurfacing, it is time to ask again: whose labour counts, which models do we make visible, and who decides?
Twelve sessions, 2 hours every month, with the same format
Over twelve sessions we will co-produce a shared vocabulary and understanding of ecofeminist economics. Each session lasts two hours and follows the same rhythm.
We begin by building the cauldron and the care that holds us (our infrastructure), followed by some thoughts on the concept(s) of the day, e.g. cost, trade, property, and a first sharing circle.
Then, in the second hour, we meet a more-than-human being and ask why she is here. We are invited to dream, write or draw from her perspective, and share again. We close with three takeaways and principles.
You do not have to join every session. You can register to the sessions that you like to attend. They are designed in a way that you do not have to do homework to catch up if you skipped a session.
Dedicated circle group in a protected online space
There will be a circle group, which will be our home base to share materials, hold discussions, and stay connected with all registered participants between live gatherings. Everyone is invited to share their written outputs or drawings in this group’s space.
After the twelfth session, everyone is invited to co-author a white paper with frameworks and tools, and perhaps an academic paper, perhaps for our new journal, on ecofeminist economics informed by our more-than-human companions.
The first 3 of the 12 sessions (Jan-June 2027)- more in details
Always on Sunday, 15.00-17.00, Amsterdam time zone
Sunday 24 January: Cost mapping in a 100 Year life, with LICHEN
We start with mapping our own costs. For a while (a week, a month), track not only what you spend in money, but also what things cost you in emotion and in time. Do diaries work for this? Do you schedule financial dates with yourself and reflect on the costs? Community economy circles use time budget tools and wellbeing maps. What would work for you? Often we assume we need to earn more, aim for excellence and optimise. But what is good enough? What is sufficient for a decent life, with a buffer for when things go wrong?
Next, I bring in ideas from The 100-Year Life by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, a book I read while living in Japan in 2018. If we may live to a hundred, what will your life look like? You cannot have it all, so where do you invest now, knowing it will bear fruit later, and where do you sacrifice?
Perhaps we bring in the astrology chart and its twelve houses as a map of life domains.
In the second half we welcome Lichen. They grow millimetres a year on bare rock, take what light, rain and dust provide, and build their body from a partnership between fungus and alga rather than from accumulation. They also show us that sufficiency is not the same as frugality: lichens are highly sensitive to air pollution, so living on little depends on a clean enough commons. What does “enough” ask of the world around us?
Sunday 21 February: Trade and non-monetary exchange – with CAROB TREE
What counts as an exchange? Markets are one answer, but alongside them run gifts, sharing, mutual aid, reciprocity and the unpaid care. This session we map our own exchanges: what do we give, receive, swap and lend in a week, and which of those ever show up in a ledger? Which exchanges make us feel rich in relationships, and which leave us depleted?
Our companion is the Carob tree. Their seeds are so uniform that they were once used as weights on the scales of traders, and the word carat travels back through the Greek word for their pods. So they lent their body to the measuring of value, while also being a tree of gifts: their pods are food for animals and people, a famine food in lean years, sweet and freely given. They are also a tree of patience. A well-known story tells of a man planting a carob that would only bear fruit after seventy years, saying that as others planted for him, so he plants for those who come after. That is an economy of delayed and intergenerational exchange, in which what you give may never return to you.
What does the Carob tree measure, and what do they refuse to be measured by?
Read also this blogpost about my encounter with carob tree (the inspiration for this session): Listening to an Andalusian University Campus
Sunday 21 March: Property- with Japanese (actually Dutch) KNOTWEED
Who owns what, and what does ownership do to our relations? This session we look at property: first intellectual property, who may claim ideas, seeds, stories and knowledge, and then especially land, the ground under our feet that is fenced, deeded, mortgaged and traded. We also touch on how other so-called resources, such as water, soil, genes, air and even carbon, are being turned into property, and who is left out when they are.
Our companion is Japanese Knotweed. In Britain, banks began refusing mortgages on homes with knotweed within seven metres, and the plant is estimated to have wiped billions off the property market, even though they are non-toxic, edible, a late-summer source of pollen for bees, and no more damaging to buildings than many other plants. Keenan (2025), Plants Against Property: Japanese Knotweed as Companion Species, reads this as a critique of property from the plant’s side.
By making land unsellable, knotweed pushes it out of the market, so that it can only be habitat and shelter rather than commodity. All knotweed in Britain is a single clone, spreading through rhizomes without sex, and refusing to die. This turns upside down the idea that property is a human subject controlling a passive object: if you have knotweed, knotweed also has you. For tenants, they may even be an ally.
Do you want to join us next year?
Sign up by October 31st to the waiting list and become a member at The Ecofeminist Society:
We believe that community care should not be an economic burder. Our mutual-aid pricing model is rooted in trust, redistribution, and abundance:
- Standard seat: 18 euro / month (or 180 euro/year)
- Accessible seat: 12 euro / month (or 120 euro.year) – limited seats available for this tier, on a. first come, first serve basis
Come rest on the waitlist for our November 2026 call, and you’ll hear from us soon!
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