Partners & Networks
Why partners matter
AIBIA’s work is built on long-term relationships. Our Living Labs and Think Tank are intentionally small and grounded, but connected to a growing constellation of universities, research networks, and community organizations.
Partnerships for us are not just logos on a page. They are about co-designing place-based education and research, sharing responsibility across regions, and building a transregional community around critical, decolonial, and prefigurative approaches to education and development.
aibia’s organizational structure
Our broader ecosystem is anchored by several core nodes that coordinate and support the wider network:
- aibia Sierra Leone (Makeni) – alternative development and education node
- aibia Italy (Molise) – Living Lab and emerging school project
- aibia New York (USA) – legal/organizational support node
- aibia Think Tank – distributed research, publishing, and collaboration community
Explore: Living Labs | Think Tank | Programs & Field Schools | News & Updates
Related sites in the wider AIBIA ecosystem: Alternative Ideas | Interpreting Capitalism | Another Democracy | Reimagining Academia
University partnerships
Core academic partners
These are universities with whom we are actively co-developing field schools, SDG-focused collaborations, and longer-term teaching and research links.
- University of Münster (Germany) – field schools, SDG partnerships, and long-term joint program development
- University of Makeni / UniMak (Sierra Leone) – higher education anchor in Sierra Leone; ICT/digital inclusion; Living Lab collaboration
- University of the West Indies / UWI (Caribbean) (Mona campus: UWI Mona) – Caribbean anchor for field schools and decolonial research
- University of Perugia (Italy) – inner-areas education; mobility and teaching links connected to Molise
- University of Coimbra (Portugal) – European mobility and field school collaboration
- Charles University (Prague, Czechia) – Central European collaboration on democracy, autonomy, and social transformation
- University of Montana (USA) – North American participation and comparative “periphery” learning collaborations
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University of Huddersfield (UK)
– experiential learning a
nd academic collaboration within aibia’s transregional education network - California Institute of Integral Studies – CIIS (USA) – partner in critical, transdisciplinary education and aibia-aligned research and learning pathways
Partners in development
We are also developing collaborations with additional European universities and institutes (including the University of Cologne), as part of a longer-term goal: a multi-node cooperative educational network rather than a single “center.”
Networks and research communities
- Reimagining Alternatives from the Margins Research Network, is a co-created project between aibia and International Sociological Association (ISA) RC48 – Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change. This is a key intellectual network for our work on autonomy, democracy, and movements for change.
How we approach partnerships
- Reciprocity and non-extraction – knowledge and resources move in multiple directions; communities are not “used.”
- Long-term orientation – we prioritize partnerships that grow over years, not one-off projects.
- Critical and decolonial commitment – we value partners willing to question assumptions and experiment with more democratic, grounded practices.
Interested in partnering?
aibia’s network is still growing. We welcome conversations with universities, community organizations, networks, and foundations interested in: field-based experiential learning in rural and “peripheral” regions; prefigurative democracy, social movements, and autonomous economies; South–North and South–South knowledge exchange; and long-term, co-governed educational infrastructures.
Please reach out via our Contact page.
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