Bianca Elzenbaumer

Bianca Elzenbaumer is a co-founder of www.brave-new-alps.com, a collaborative design practice based in the alpine Vallagarina valley in Italy, whose 12 members are dedicated to the creation of commons and community economies. Since embarking on design studies in 2002, she has been looking for ways in which to activate design skills for eco-social causes. Since 2010, she has been doing research on the entanglements and world-views that create precarious working conditions, which in turn make critical design practices difficult to sustain. Simultaneously, as a member of the international Community Economies Research Network, she has been activating empowering readings of the economy in order to create modes of practice and living that sustain herself and others who engage in transformative practice. Currently, besides working as part of Brave New Alps, she works as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow at Eurac Research (IT), where she runs the Alpine Community Economies Lab.