G has been involved in social movement organising and education since the late 1980’s. He is a highly regarded trainer and has designed numerous training programmes covering areas such as psychosocial resilience in activism, the ecology of social movements, and leaderful organising. As a founding member of the Ulex Project, he is known for highly innovative work blending pedagogical methodologies. This holistic approach to activist learning has inspired numerous training initiatives across Europe. He currently steers the strategic development of the Ulex Project and its social movement capacity building programme.

Ilaj is an experienced trainer, mostly holding space for collective exploration of the topics of burnout, weathering repression, navigating trauma and cultivating solidarity in social movements. Ilaj is project lead for Ulex’s LGBTQI+ psycho-social resilience and holistic security programme. Before committing full time to Ulex, Ilaj was involved in various grassroots social movements, mostly in Eastern and Southern Europe. Ilaj is also a feminist self defence and assertiveness trainer and they are passionate about working with body awareness as a radical means of deconstructing internalized systems of oppression. Ilaj is a member of the Ulex core team.

Hilal Demir, an anarcha-queer DJing at home is an activist, trainer, facilitator for 20 + years and has experience on organizing, strategizing on nonviolent direct action, campaign and social movement levels, working with power, active solidarity, resilience, repression and security.  She is passionate about leading informal learning experiences, community organizing, group dynamics and organisational cultures, supporting activists and organizations to build long lasting transformative social movements for a just future.

Nontokozo says: I have always been passionate about building community, inner engineering, group dynamics, motivating and empowering others. I enjoy tackling women issues, building bridges of hope and healing between Africa & Europe and beyond, I love sharing knowledge on conscious living, advocating for climate and social justice, and regenerative education. My work  includes education on  diversity and racism awareness. I am a firm believer of UBUNTU an Indigenous African Knowledge System – “I am because we are”. I am committed to creating safe spaces and holistic events for individuals and group processes, to support in achieving desired goals and creating a common vision, using indigenous wisdom, processwork facilitation and other methodologies.’

Tashy Endres has 18 years of experience in movements for social and spatial justice. This includes long-standing involvements in the movement of unemployed and landless workers in Buenos Aires, Occupy Wall Street in New York City, Decolonizing Architecture in Bethlehem, Kotti & Co (a tenants initiative in the Berlin social housing system), Berlin Rent Referendum and the Jumpstarting Working Group of Expropriating Deutsche Wohnen & Co in Berlin, which she/they co-founded and is currently active in. Tashy works as a political educator, facilitator, trainer and strategy coach in social movements and political organisations in the fields of transformative (community) organizing, social justice and critical diversity, nonviolent communication and conflict transformation through an intersectional lense as well as regenerative organizing and activism.

Marina Tota Marina is an educator, organizer, activist, and researcher committed to building people power for a just and regenerative society. She has a background in psychology and education and about 15 years’ international experience in facilitating transformative learning and organizing processes with social movements, civil society groups, and international organisations. Originally from Italy, she has lived and worked across Europe, Africa, Asia and Central America designing, coordinating and facilitating trainings on organizing, artistic activism, campaigning, leadership, participatory action research, and more as part of Actionaid – Global Platforms. She coordinated, trained and coached activists, organisers, volunteers, to lead campaigns for climate justice, gender justice, human rights and Panafricanism. She has been leading the creation and development of national and international activist networks such as Activista Ghana, the African Creative Action Network. Currently, she is currently the Executive Director of the European Community Organizing Network (ECON). 

Laurence is a Dublin-based writer, teacher and activist, and one of Europe’s best-known social movement researchers. He’s been in many different movements starting with anti-war and anti-apartheid activism in the 1980s, including helping organise the anti-capitalist “movement of movements” in Ireland, media spokesperson for a summit protest, resisting Shell, networking between movements and parties, alternative schools and kindergartens, co-running a Masters for activists, helping organise a Zapatista tour and editing several radical publications, most recently the activist-researcher social movement journal Interface. In his day job as a researcher, he’s written or edited a dozen books as well as lots of free stuff which you can find here. Once he was a street musician but now prefers plumbing wood-fired hot tubs in a field for Buddhist camping retreats.

Fergal is a senior lecturer at the Department of Adult and Community Education, Maynooth, National University of Ireland and is a co-director of the Doctorate in Higher and Adult Education and the PhD in Adult and Community Education programmes. Fergal has been involved in campaigns and social movements most of his adult life. He worked in community adult education before becoming an academic and these interests led his to set up with others a Masters in Community Education Equality and Social Activism. His main areas of interest are equality, education, transformative education and participatory research and helps run a network on Active Democratic Citizenship and Adult Learning.

Niccolo is a director of European Alternatives. He has worked throughout Europe and North Africa networking movements, civil society, academics and artists, with a particular focus on the place of imagination and strategic foresight in opening up a pathway to change. He has been involved in founding various organisations, magazines, festivals and movements on both sides of the mediterranean.

Jana is a facilitator, activist and organiser dedicated to creating transformative learning spaces and building capacity to collaboratively strategise for system change. With a background in education, she has a passion for critical and experiential pedagogy and research interest in how social movements learn and engage in counter-hegemonic knowledge production. Organising in different networks across the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, the UK, and Germany, she is an adventurer of coalition building and practioner of transnational activism. Drawing from experience in the social and climate justice movement, she recently coordinated the programme for People’s Summit with the COP26Coalition and now works with European Alternatives and the School of Transnational Organizing. Keeping it up with the grassroots; Berlin based.

There is a long history of student and staff activism at the National University of Ireland Maynooth, a key centre for popular education and research on social movements. A Masters in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism ran for five years, working with experienced activists across a very wide range of movements and social groups. The Maynooth members of MLC are experienced movement researchers and adult educators as well as activists themselves.

ECON is a hub for the community organizing movement and supports organizers to build an effective counterbalance to the rise of right-wing extremism, racism, and nationalism in Europe.  ECON serves as a hub for the community organizing movement across Europe with a focus on developing the craft of organizing through training and mentorship, technical assistance, and by creating a space for organizers from different countries to collectively develop their strategic practice.

European Alternatives works to promote democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation-state and imagine, demand and enact alternatives for a viable future for Europe. They: articulate a radical, long-term vision of democratic, just and culturally-open politics, society and culture beyond the nation-state for Europe and for the world; experiment with forms of action that contribute to transformative change in political institutions, society, the economy and imagination; build the capacity, the mutual-awareness and connection of members, activists and organisations working in line with our values; and advance and defend human, fundamental, civic, democratic and social rights across borders.