Dr Miriam Meissner (M.M.)

Connecting social sciences and humanities concepts and approaches, my work addresses the interrelations between cities, popular culture, political economy and the environment. In particular, it examines how practices and imaginaries in contemporary urban, lifestyle and activist culture mediate and politicize macro-economic processes and their socio-ecological repercussions. It seeks to actively contribute to ongoing public debates and social movements in the fields of socio-environmental justice and post-growth.

In 2018, I  started the project From Minimalist Forms to Post-Growth Economies?, which is funded by the Veni scheme of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. The problem motivating this research is that environmental scientists increasingly highlight the need for industrialized societies to implement a rapid societal transition to post-growth economies in order to achieve urgent sustainability targets. Post-growth currently tends to be associated with radicalism and austerity. It is therefore unpopular. To encounter this challenge, my research examines the potential of minimalist lifestyles in promoting socially shared post-growth values and practices through the innovation of everyday organizing patterns ('forms').

In addition, I have a strong interest in urban imaginaries. My key publications in this field include the monograph Narrating the Global Financial Crisis: Urban Imaginaries and the Politics of Myth (2017, Palgrave), and the co-edited volumes The Routledge Companion to Urban Imaginaries (2018) and Global Garbage: Urban Imaginaries of Waste, Excess and Abandonment (Routledge 2016).

For an overview of my PUBLICATIONS, please see here: https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/en/persons/miriam-meissner/publications/