Dr Miriam Meissner (M.M.)

Bridging the social sciences and humanities, Miriam's research examines cultural responses to the social, economic, and ecological consequences of capitalist accumulation and extractivism. It explores how literature, film, urbanism, lifestyles, and (art)activism either politicize—or sometimes fail to politicize—forms of capitalist exploitation, including rent extraction, labor exploitation, the attention economy, financialization, and ecological extractivism.

Within this framework, she has analyzed financial crisis narratives in popular film, literature, and journalistic photography and urban imaginaries of waste and abandonment. 

Miriam has worked extensively on the politics of urban imaginaries – in particular on urban visions for socio-spatial justice and environmental regeneration. 

She has also researched cultural industries and their role in neoliberal urban redevelopment, including the dynamics of gentrification.

Miriam's current research focuses on postgrowth and cultural politics. A key project over the past several years examines minimalist lifestyles and self-help as frequently depoliticized middle-class responses to capitalist exploitation, while exploring strategies for mobilizing middle-class desires toward a more radical aim: a postgrowth politics that challenges capitalist exploitation and extractivism while democratizing the post-material pleasures celebrated by minimalism (for more info please see here and here). 

Another strand of Miriam 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, the project asks: what comes After the Circular City?

An overarching societal goal of Miriam's work is to develop cultural strategies that support contemporary movements for socio-economic and environmental justice, particularly in the context of postgrowth.

Academic Service:

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

Academic Engagement:

Beyond academia, Miriam is 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)