Our work promotes a local and global commons society

The Centre for Commons Organising Values Equalities and Resilience (COVER) is creating new formal and informal educational opportunities.

Our work seeks to create resources for understanding and promoting sustainable commons value creation and values. Our activity includes events, press, education and impact projects, to spread post-capitalist principles for transforming economic management.

We aim to efficiently meet individual and community needs, foster more effective public policies and expand 20th century human rights.


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Commons Consortium

The Commons Consortium is COVER’s applied wing, offering strategic consultancy and design services for democratic and commons-based systems change. Rooted in the same values as COVER, the Consortium serves as a platform for researchers, think tanks, cooperative practitioners, and community organisers to develop and implement commons-based alternatives to neoliberal governance, extractive economics, and technocratic development models.

Rather than a service provider or research cluster alone, the Consortium is a growing ecosystem dedicated to enabling systemic transition. It is focused on embedding democratic governance, ecological responsibility, and collective care into public institutions, economic models, and technological infrastructures.

COVER Network

A collaborative infrastructure for knowledge exchange and political action. Programming includes a Commons Summer School (with the Centre for Heterodox Economics), a Commons Atlas, and a Speaker Exchange Programme.

The Network is not simply a list of partners or collaborators, but a living infrastructure for learning, sharing, and collective strategy. It enables mutual support and amplifies the visibility and viability of commons initiatives across regions, sectors, and disciplines. By cultivating an interconnected ecosystem of knowledge, solidarity, and strategic action, it complements the research and consultancy pillars with sustained international presence and influence.

COVER Seminars

The backbone of our academic engagement, these weekly online seminars provide a global platform for emerging and established scholars to share research related to the commons, post-capitalist alternatives, digital governance, and democratic innovation. The seminars also provide a key vehicle for early career researchers and students to present work-in-progress and receive feedback.

AI Rights & Wrongs Series

This London-based public seminar series critically explores legal, ethical, and socio-political issues around algorithmic management and AI governance.

Commons Salon

A bi-monthly evening meeting that brings together academics, community organisers, artists, technologists, and cooperative leaders.

Hosted both in-person and online, the Salon will serve as an informal but intellectually rigorous space to incubate collaborative projects and real-world applications of commons-based thinking.

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Stay up to date with COVER

Discover the very latest announcements from COVER by joining the JISC mailing list. You can find out more about our latest publications, events and activities by visiting JISC.

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Contact us
Centre for Commons Organising Values Equalities and Resilience (COVER) Co-Directors:
Peter Bloom, Phoebe Moore, and Stevphen Shukaitis
Essex Business School University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex
CO4 3SQ