Seminar: "Analysis of social wellbeing in Socialist Slovenia during the 1980-1990 crisis", by Aljoša Slameršak

The REAL-Postgrowth project (Post-growth – REAL – A Post-Growth Deal) is excited to announce that our postdoctoral researcher at ICTA-UAB, Aljoša Slameršak will present a public talk as part of our monthly public seminar series.

Seminar: "Analysis of social wellbeing in Socialist Slovenia during the 1980-1990 crisis"

Speaker:  Aljoša Slameršak, ICTA-UAB postdoctoral researcher

Facilitation: Dylan Sullivan

• Date: Tuesday, January 27th, 2026
• Time:  15 -16h (CET)
• Venue: Online ONLY - https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89678424340?pwd=beLbGW4GbNFHmj8Tk8nmAz5cz0p5bY.1

The post-growth ambition to decouple well-being and sustainability from economic growth is often dismissed as unrealistic due to the lack of historical precedent. To address this critique, I examine the case of the Yugoslav socialist republic of Slovenia during the 1980s economic crisis. Through an extensive analysis of social well-being indicators, I show that socialist Slovenia managed to maintain (or in some dimensions even improve) social well-being despite experiencing a prolonged crisis. Having achieved a partial delinking of social well-being from economic growth, albeit unintentionally, I argue that Slovenia’s “post-growth” experience demonstrates that such decoupling is indeed possible and offers valuable lessons for contemporary post-growth policy and politics. 

Aljoša Slameršak is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA-UAB) and secretary of Research and Degrowth Internaitonal. In his research, Aljoša is modelling post-growth scenarios of ambitious climate mitigation and high human well-being.