aibia Think Tank

What is the AIBIA Think Tank?

The AIBIA Think Tank is the analytical and imaginative engine of AIBIA Global.

It gathers researchers, community practitioners, artists, writers, and students around a shared task:

to study what is happening in the Living Labs, make sense of it, and turn it into concepts, methods, and outputs that can be used both on the ground and in wider debates about issues affecting the world - from climate change, to inequality, to alternative futures.

The Think Tank is not a detached research institute. It is embedded in our Living Laboratories in Sierra Leone, Italy, and other partner sites, and it moves constantly between:

• observation and analysis,

• conceptual work and theory-building,

• practical experimentation and prefigurative re-implementation,

• and public-facing outputs for academics, activists, communities, and policy actors.

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Our purpose

The Think Tank exists to:

1. Collect and interpret what is happening in the Living Labs.
   We document practices, tensions, breakthroughs, failures, and everyday experiments in our sites—whether that’s ICT work in Sierra Leone, rural regeneration in Molise, or emerging projects elsewhere.

2. Develop critical re-imaginative theory from those experiences.
   We treat Living Labs as sources of theory, not just examples. Concepts like autonomy, prefigurative democracy, inner areas, digital divides, or autonomous economies are worked out in conversation with people and places, not only in books.

3. Translate analysis into action.
   Insights from our research are fed back into the Living Labs as:

   • design changes,

   • new forms of governance and participation,

   • alternative economic experiments,

   • and revised educational programs.

4. Produce outputs that travel.
   We turn this work into:

   • academic publications and collective volumes,

   • white papers, briefs, and policy-oriented documents,

   • films, podcasts, and other media,

   • and open-access teaching materials and curricula.

These outputs are designed to speak to multiple worlds at once: local partners, global movements, universities, and policy communities.

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What the Think Tank does (in practice)

You can imagine the Think Tank as working in three overlapping modes:

1. Grounded Research and Documentation

• Ethnographic and qualitative research in the Living Labs

• Participatory and co-produced research with community partners

• Field notes, interviews, mapping, and documentation of everyday practices

• Archiving of stories, conflicts, and experiments that might otherwise disappear

The goal here is not to extract “data,” but to slow down and pay attention to what people are already doing to build more livable futures.

2. Concept Work: Critical Re-imaginative Theory

The Think Tank develops and refines the theoretical language that holds AIBIA together:

• critical re-imaginative theory,

• prefigurative democracy and democratic escalation,

• autonomy and autonomous economies,

• decolonial and post-/anti-capitalist approaches to development and education,

• South–North and North–South knowledge circulation.

This is where we ask:

• What are we learning from Sierra Leone, Molise, Jamaica, or other sites that existing concepts can’t quite capture?

• What new terms, frameworks, or methods do we need?

This work will be introduced and expanded on the Critical Re-imaginative Theory subpage.

3. Translation into Outputs & Implementation

Research and theory are only useful if they change something—either on the ground or in how people think and act elsewhere.

The Think Tank therefore:

• works with the Living Lab teams to redesign programs, governance, and economic experiments based on what we learn;

• co-produces policy briefs and white papers that translate grounded insights into concrete recommendations for municipalities, ministries, universities, and funders;

• supports academic writing (articles, book chapters, monographs) and public-facing media (films, podcasts, online essays) that open the work to wider audiences.

This is where the Publications & White Papers subpage comes in.

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How the Think Tank connects to Living Labs and Programs

The Think Tank:

• listens to the Living Labs – following what is happening in Sierra Leone, Italy, and other sites;

• thinks with the Living Labs – co-analyzing experiences with local residents, students, and staff;

• feeds back into the Living Labs – sharing findings and experimenting with new practices based on them;

• supports Programs & Field Schools – by providing conceptual frameworks, methodological tools, and structured reflection spaces for participants.

A field school or residency might start in a Living Lab, but it is the Think Tank that:

• helps frame the guiding questions,

• holds the longer-term research agenda,

• and ensures that each cohort’s work becomes part of a growing, shared body of knowledge rather than a one-off experience.

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Who is part of the Think Tank?

The Think Tank is designed as a global, hybrid community, bringing together:

• AIBIA’s core team and Living Lab coordinators

• Local partners and practitioners from our sites

• University-based researchers and postdocs

• Artists, writers, and filmmakers

• Students and alumni from AIBIA’s programs and schools

People can participate through:

• residencies and fellowships anchored in a Living Lab,

• collaborative research projects and grants,

• co-authored publications and media projects,

• online reading groups, seminars, and working groups.

The aim is to create a space where thinking and doing are not split, and where people from different backgrounds can shape shared questions and outputs.

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Subsections of the Think Tank

→ Critical Re-imaginative Theory

A dedicated page that will:

• define what we mean by “critical re-imaginative theory,”

• trace its roots (in social movements, decolonial thought, prefigurative politics, autonomous practices, etc.),

• and show how we use this framework to make sense of what happens in our Living Labs and programs.

This is the conceptual heart of the Think Tank.

→ Publications & White Papers

A page that will:

• list and organize AIBIA’s outputs:

  • academic articles and books,

  • working papers and white papers,

  • policy briefs,

  • reports and internal documents you choose to make public,

  • multimedia projects (films, podcasts, etc.);

• highlight key themes (e.g. education, democracy, rural regeneration, ICT, autonomous economies);

• and make it easy for partners, funders, and collaborators to see what we’ve already done and build on it.