Martijn de Waal: Design & the civic economy
This lecture is part of the Reworlding Spring School that will take place at Hasselt University, at the historic beguinage in Hasselt (Belgium), from 4 to 8 May 2026.
This 5-day intensive programme explores the role of “re-institutioning” in socio-environmental transitions, bringing together researchers, practitioners, and students to engage with new approaches to institutions and governance, for example from more-than-human perspectives.
Martijn de Waal: Design & the civic economy.
Can we think of the economy and money as something that could be designed? In this talk Martijn will bring a perspective from media studies and design towards emerging economic practices such as urban commons that intend to strengthen relationships of care and planetary well-being rather than mere profit or efficiency.
He will explore the design of media and technologies that could facilitate such systems, such as currencies, current-sees and rights-based tokens.
Will such an approach enable local economies to take negative externalities into account, while rewarding practices of care? Or do we risk to 'transactionalize the social', rather than the reverse: designing economies that are relational and caring?
About Martijn de Waal
Martijn de Waal is a professor leading the Civic Interaction Design research group at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. The group explores how design & technology can contribute to civic life: the numerous and varied interactions through which people in a society come together to strive towards collective well-being. De Waal is a co author of books such as ‘The city as interface.
How New Media are Changing the City’; ‘The Platform Society. Public Values in a Connective World’, and ‘The Hackable City. Digital Media and Collaborative City-Making in the Network Society’.
The REWORLDING Network
How do people, places and more-than-human beings make sense of socio-ecological change - and act upon it? REWORLDING brings together researchers, communities and organisations to explore how participatory design can help navigate these complex realities.
We focus on inclusive, careful and situated approaches that create space for unheard voices - human and more-than-human - and foster new ways of learning and acting together.
Date and location:
- Thursday May 7th 2026
- Begijnhof Hasselt, Kapittelzaal (house #2 / 1.4)
- 17h30 - 18h30
- Lecture open for everyone
Registration
Please register via this form.
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