Seminar: "Political Ecological Economics and the nature of economic growth", by Giorgos Kallis

The REAL-Postgrowth project (Post-growth – REAL – A Post-Growth Deal) is excited to announce that ICTA-UAB researcher Giorgos Kallis, presents a public talk as part of our monthly public seminar series.

Seminar: "Political Ecological Economics and the nature of economic growth" 

Speaker:  Giorgos Kallis, ICTA-UAB researcher

• Date: Tuesday, Novemebr 4th 2025
• Time:  15 -16.30 (CET)
• Venue: Online- https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88547266318?pwd=Zc1UGBL8baTWlHVY59fMptfM5S9dQH.1

This seminar will sketch a Political Ecological Economics,an approach that combines the ecological insights of the Barcelona school withfeminist and decolonial Marxist political economy, as well as anthropologicalunderstandings of how the very notion of economy has come into being. We will explorehow economic growth is not only a question of resource throughput orproductivity but fundamentally a political and material process: one driven bythe extraction and reinvestment of surplus through mechanisms of exploitation,appropriation, and cost-shifting. Growth persists not simply because of itsbenefits, but because it serves as a powerful narrative legitimising privateaccumulation as a public good. The session will provide conceptual tools tounderstand how economies grow, why they remain locked into growth, andwhat it would mean to reorient them toward ecological and social sufficiency.

Giorgos Kallis is one of the three co-PIs of REAL, an ecological economist and political ecologistworking on environmental justice and degrowth. He has a Bachelorsdegree in chemistry and a Masters in environmental engineering from ImperialCollege, a PhD in environmental policy from the University of the Aegean,and a second Masters in economics from the Barcelona Graduate School ofEconomics. He is ICREA professor in Barcelona since 2010.