ORGADIVA – organizing democracy, diversity and alternatives

Research Group: ORGADIVA - Organizing for tomorrow: democracy, diversity and alternatives

Through interdisciplinary research, the ORGADIVA aims to create a platform for researchers to collaborate and exchange ideas about how to build more inclusive, equitable, and democratic societies. The group is interested in exploring how new forms of organizing, work and economic systems can be created that are sustainable, just and with a civic dimension.

The group members also explore how these concepts unfold in social movements, alternative organizations, civil society, social enterprises, and more conventional workplaces. Overall, the group aims to contribute to developing research and teaching competence around leveraging diversity in the workplace and exploring the potential for building new worlds that prioritize social sustainability, innovation, and democracy, and also learn from past experiences.

Main focus points:

• Analyze and theorize models of governance and organizing that aim towards progressive and sustainable change in society, and explore the ongoing transformations of capitalism and the transitions to more inclusive, just, and democratic economic systems.
• Interrogate what is meant by diversity, equity, and inclusion conceptually and how they are organized and deployed. This includes exploring various research interests such as feminist and queer theory, leadership, social entrepreneurship, or DEI work(ers), and building competence around addressing the hidden curriculum and leveraging diversity in the classroom.
• Focus on civic governance processes, including autonomous and democratic governance, processes of inclusion and exclusion, and the role of civil society in meeting grand challenges. This supposes to look to the future put also to take inspiration from/engage with how they have been built and the consequences for the possibilities of action of today and in the future.