About IASC Europe
The IASC was founded on May 27, 1989 and its legal address has been at Indiana University since then. Various global, regional and topical conferences have been organized in Europe over the years. Since 2018 we started to decentralize our coordination, particularly to facilitate understanding and practice of commons on more regional and local levels. We would like to support communication among the members as well as potential members of the association within the region/country/thematic areas, and reach out to broader external audiences.
Latest News
Call for Papers: Special Issue “The Ethics of the Commons”, Journal of the Business Ethics, submission deadline December 15, 2018
‘Decommonising the mind’: historical impacts of British imperialism on indigenous tenure systems and self-understanding in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland
Constitutionality: conditions for crafting local ownership of institution-building processes by Tobias Haller, Greg Acciaioli & Stephan Rist (SNR’s Designated Award Finalist)
Call for Papers: Special Issue ‘Does commons grabbing lead to resilience grabbing? The anti-politics machine of neo-liberal agrarian development and local responses’, new deadline December 31, 2018
‘Conceptualizing the New Commons – The Examples of Knowledge Commons & Seed and Variety Commons’: IASC Workshop connects the open access to knowledge with agricultural questions for the future
Program announced for IASC Workshop ‘Social Mobilization and the Commons’
IASC Workshop ‘Conceptualizing the New Commons’ is under way
Call for Papers: Special Issue “The Ethics of the Commons”, Journal of the Business Ethics, submission deadline December 15, 2018
‘Decommonising the mind’: historical impacts of British imperialism on indigenous tenure systems and self-understanding in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland
Constitutionality: conditions for crafting local ownership of institution-building processes by Tobias Haller, Greg Acciaioli & Stephan Rist (SNR’s Designated Award Finalist)
Call for Papers: Special Issue ‘Does commons grabbing lead to resilience grabbing? The anti-politics machine of neo-liberal agrarian development and local responses’, new deadline December 31, 2018
‘Conceptualizing the New Commons – The Examples of Knowledge Commons & Seed and Variety Commons’: IASC Workshop connects the open access to knowledge with agricultural questions for the future
Program announced for IASC Workshop ‘Social Mobilization and the Commons’
IASC Workshop ‘Conceptualizing the New Commons’ is under way
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Team Europe
Regional IASC coordinator for Europe

Insa Theesfeld
Professor of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Policy, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
President of IASC
Insa Theesfeld is an agricultural economist, specialized in institutional economics and resource economics and works as Professor of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Policy at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Her research and teaching fields compose the desirable fit between policies foreseen to be implemented and the formal and informal institutional arrangements in place. She analyses how communities govern their use of natural resources, taking power and leadership aspects at different scales into account. A significant strand of her work has explored water resource management issues and the linkages to other natural resources, emerging from the property rights structures in place. Based on her geographical orientation she has developed and is leading the research field on pseudo-commons in post-socialist countries.
Communications Officer for IASC Europe

Ilkhom Soliev
Senior Researcher / Lecturer at the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Policy, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany
Ilkhom Soliev is an institutional economist with research focus on governance of common pool resources. His work in research, education, and development has focused on the study of sustainable and equitable natural resource governance and effective institutions. He has studied and developed empirical and theoretical foundations of benefit sharing as a governance approach to managing shared water resources in Central Asia, documenting and analyzing over a century-long data. As a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, he focuses on examining transformative power of benefit sharing using new methods across multiple natural resource domains of water, land, biodiversity and climate, as well as in various cultural and political contexts spanning from Central Asia and the wider post-Soviet region to developed countries such as Germany and the United States.