Lucie Sovová

Diverse and community food economies, urban gardening, alternative food networks, Central and Eastern Europe, degrowth

I am interested in heterodox economic thought and practice particularly in relation to agriculture and food provisioning. My research explores everyday practices taking place on the margins of formal economy, such as food self-provisioning or food sharing. I am also interested in exploring economic models which foster solidarity between producers and consumers, such as community supported agriculture, solidarity payment schemes etc. 

I was introduced to the CERN, and the diverse economies thinking, by Nadia Johanisová's courses on ecological economics and her pioneering work on community economies in Czechia. Diverse economies formed a theoretical backbone to my PhD research on urban food self-provisioning in Czechia which I defended cum laude. I am currently involved in the Horizon Europe Innovation Action project CULTIVATE, where I contribute to a work package investigating citizen engagement in food sharing, lead by Oona Morrow. 

Thanks to the 2020 edition of the Liviana conference, I got to meet Ottavia Cima and Pete North in conversation about diverse economies of postsocialism, which has later snowballed into a group of scholars - the Polička collective - with a shared interest in exploring and theorizing economic diversity from "the East", that is, countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia which experienced state-socialism.