Dr Miriam Meissner (M.M.)

My research bridges critical theory, political ecology, and cultural analysis, with a central focus on how popular culture responds to the social, economic, and ecological consequences of capitalist accumulation. In particular, I examine how film, literature, urban and lifestyle movements engage with—or at times fail to engage with—the political dimensions of capitalist exploitation and extractivism.

While my PhD explored filmic, literary, and photographic portrayals of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, my current work addresses the cultural challenge of transitioning from an economic-growth-based hegemony to one grounded in postgrowth principles.

In this context, I have conducted research on the rise of minimalist self-help (supported by an NWO Veni grant), arguing that it tends to depoliticize middle-class discontent with capitalist exploitation, while also exploring how minimalist desires might be redirected toward more radical postgrowth politics.

Another strand of my research, conducted collaboratively, investigates regenerative urbanism. Building on critiques that circular economy initiatives often repackage ineffective green growth strategies without addressing power, governance, and justice, we ask: what comes After the Circular City?

I serve on the editorial board of the Journal of Urban Political Ecology and on the board of the Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies (OSL). 

Beyond academia, I am a member of the Dutch degrowth network Ontgroei, a participant in the Postgrowth Cities Coalition, co-organizer of the 2021 International Degrowth Conference, and an advisory board member of the housing cooperative De Nieuwe Meent (Amsterdam).

Key publications:

Monographs

• Less Is Not Enough: Minimalist Desires and Postgrowth Politics (forthcoming, Bloomsbury)
• Narrating the Global Financial Crisis: Urban Imaginaries and the Politics of Myth (2017, Palgrave)

Edited Volumes

• The Routledge Companion to Urban Imaginaries (co-edited with C. Lindner, 2018, Routledge)
• Global Garbage: Urban Imaginaries of Waste, Excess and Abandonment (co-edited with C. Lindner, 2016, Routledge)

Articles on Eco-Politics/Culture:

• Social Movements' Transformative Climate Change Communication: Extinction Rebellion's Artivism (co-authored with L. Stammen, 2024, Social Movement Studies)
• Towards a Cultural Politics of Postgrowth: Prefiguration, Popularization, Pressure (2021, Journal of Political Ecology)
• Against Accumulaton: Lifestyle Minimalism, Degrowth and the Present Post-Ecological Condition (2019, Journal of Cultural Economy)

Articles on Urban Culture/Politics:

• Slow Art in the Creative City: Amsterdam, Street Photography, and Urban Renewal (co-authored with C. Lindner, 2014, Space and Culture)
• Questioning Urban Modernity (co-authored with P. Dibazar, C  Lindner and J. Naeff, 2013, European Journal of Cultural Studies)
• Portraying the Global Financial Crisis: Myth, Aesthetics and the City (2012, NECSUS Journal of Media Studies)