Workshop: "The centrality of human needs in degrowth studies"

The REAL – A Post-Growth Deal project is pleased to invite you to an open workshop on human need theories within the degrowth discourse.

Workshop: "The centrality of human needs in degrowth studies" 

• Date: Thursday, May 29th 2025
• From: 3 pm to 5 pm
• Venue: Room Z/032 (100 % presential) - Please register by sending a mail to julia.grosinger@uab.cat

Speakers

• Sofia Adam, Professor in the department of Social Policy, Democritus University of Thrace
• Theodor Semertzidis, ICTA-UAB postdoctoral researcher
• Yulia Grosinger, ICTA-UAB postdoctoral researcher

This workshop intends to enrich our understanding of human need theories as they are deployed and operationalized within the degrowth discourse. The starting point is to reflect upon universal human need theories and upon alleged distinctions between needs and wants, basic and non basic needs. From then on, we move to the theoretical grounding of concepts such as sufficiency and frugality. Finally, we move to how the concept of human needs guides empirical investigations linking human need satisfaction and well-being from a degrowth perspective.

Sofia Adam is an Assistant Professor in the department of Social Policy, Democritus university of Thrace, and an adjunct lecturer at the Master Program on Social Solidarity Economy at the Hellenic Open University. She has extensive research and training experience in Social Solidarity Economy (SSE). She has worked extensively as a researcher at the Labour Institute of the General Confederation of Greek Labour. She has served as a Special Advisor in SSE at the Greek Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Solidarity. She worked as Program Coordinator of SSE at the Heinrich Boell Foundation Thessaloniki office.

Theo Semertzidis is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow working on Eudaimonia and Degrowth and specifically interested in various aspects of wellbeing and ethics within ecological economics and political ecology. He focuses on degrowth values based on eudaimonic principles, from a conceptual perspective down to applications in the form of indicators. He has a background in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Urban Regeneration, and Sustainable Resources and Modelling (water and energy).

Julia Grosinger is a human geographer striving to understand the connections between people, places, and a good quality of lifeShe focuses on European heterogenous rural areas, such as post-industrial zones in Catalonia/Spain and Alpine agricultural landscapes in France and Italy. Her work emphasizes the importance of non-material aspects beyond monetary means ( e.g place attachment, belonging) to human flourishing). Empiricially she applies and develops inclusive mobile methodologies.