Michel Bauwens

Founder, P2P Foundation

Michel Bauwens is the founder of the P2P Foundation, and an internationally recognized theorist and educator on the commons and the emergence of peer-to-peer systems as a key feature of the digital global economy. Michel travels extensively giving workshops and lectures on P2P and the Commons as emergent paradigms and the opportunities they present to move towards a post-capitalist world. Michel was Primavera Research Fellow at the University of Amsterdam and external expert at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (2008, 2012). He writes on peer production systems, governance, and property and was Research Director of the FLOK Research Group in Ecuador.

Building on his experience in the FLOK Project in Ecuador, Michel has crafted a Commons Transition Plan for the city of Ghent in Belgium. For the next three years he is also adviser to SMart, a fast growing European labour mutual for autonomous workers, seeking welfare reform (commonfare), while looking into bio-capacity-based, contributive accounting mechanisms. He is co-author with Vasilis Kostakis of “Network Society and Future Scenarios for a Collaborative Economy” (2016).