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According to the IPCC, addressing the environmental crisis requires shifting from a growth-centered economy to one grounded in well-being. The ecological transition therefore compels us to fundamentally rethink not only our patterns of consumption and production, but also the organization and meaning of work. While labour institutions remain a central pillar of our productivist model, imagining credible transition pathways requires questioning what we define as work and which activities we choose to value.

A new seminar series, organized within the framework of the ERC project RethinkingWork, seeks to explore these issues through economic, sociological, ecological, and feminist perspectives. This multidisciplinary approach will foster a cross-cutting reflection on the role of work in a post-productivist society and on the forms of activity, both paid or unpaid, that can genuinely support a just ecological and social transition.

The next seminars are scheduled on:

• Friday, 13 March: Timothée Duverger (SciencesPo Bordeaux) will present his research on recent experiments and new imaginaries surrounding work. Discussant: Julien Charles (Centre socialiste d’éducation permanente)
• Friday, 14 April: Mathilde Guergoat-Larivière (Université de Lille) will discuss findings from a quantitative study that sheds light on the quality of green jobs in France. Discussant: Bernard Conter (Institut wallon de l’évaluation, de la prospective et de la statistique)
• Tuesday, 19 May: Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Geneviève Pruvost (EHESS & CNRS) will examine how the hierarchical divide between productive and reproductive labor is rooted in a spatial and temporal separation shaped by the international division of labor, rendering subsistence work invisible and peripheral. Discussant: Vincent Delobel (farmer and administrator at Fugea)
• Tuesday, 2 June : Philosopher Céline Marty (Université de Besançon) will revisit André Gorz’s anti-productivist thought and his ecological critique of capitalism, highlighting his vision of ecosocialist degrowth based on the norm of sufficiency and a potential alliance between labor and environmental struggles. Discussant: Laurence Blésin (CSC).

The series is aimed at researchers, as well as trade unions, employers’ organizations, actors involved in socio-professional integration, and anti-poverty initiatives, as well as members of the general public who are interested in these issues. The seminars are held in French and hosted by TRANSFO, an interdisciplinary research center focusing on social change, located in Charleroi.

For more information and to sign up, please visit https://transfo.site.ulb.be/

The RethinkingWork team is delighted to announce the launch of a seminar series around the role of work in the ecological transition. On February 10, the first seminar was held at the UCampus Charleroi where sociologist Douglas Sepulchre (doctoral candidate at the METICES lab – ULB) presented the findings of his qualitative study focusing on trade union mobilization around environmental issues.
Drawing on interviews with union delegates and rank-and-file members at Liège Airport, his presentation explained how work practices and occupational settings shape workers’ environmental perceptions and contribute to trade unionists’ engagement with ecological concerns. At a time of “green backlash” that threatens the capacity to act on ecological crises, Douglas’ presentation underscored the importance of analyzing specific dynamics within sites of production. Evelyne Jadoul, advisor and trainer on environmental and social issues (Réseau Intersyndical de Sensibilisation à l’Environnement // CEPAG) provided insights from the trade union perspective.

The seminar is part of a series co-organized by the RethinkingWork and TRANSFO teams in 2026. TRANSFO is an interdisciplinary research center focusing on social change, located in Charleroi.

For more information on the seminar series, please visit: https://transfo.site.ulb.be/

At the invitation of Marco Rocca, researcher at CNRS, and Mélanie Schmitt, professor of Labour Law (University of Strasbourg), Elise Dermine had the pleasureto explain the foundations of the ERC RethinkingWork project in a presentation entitled “What role for labour law in the ecological transition?”.
Elise’s presentation took place within an international seminar held at the Faculty of Law in Strasbourg, which brought together labour law researchers to share their projects and work in progress on the contribution of law to European research on work: https://dres.unistra.fr/actualites/retour-sur-le-workshop-international-work-society-the-contribution-of-labour-law-a-conversation-with-adelle-blackett/

These seminar, held on 6 February, was organised in honour of Adelle Blackett, Professor of Labour Law at McGill University, appointed Senior Advisor to the Director-General of the International Labour Organization in Geneva in 2025.

Warm thanks to Adelle Blackett and Linxin He, as well as all seminar participants for their feedback on the project!

On Friday, 14 November 2025, our team had the pleasure of welcoming eleven labour and social security law experts to the Université libre de Bruxelles for the launch of the first phase of RethinkingWork.

Under the leadership of Elise Dermine and Juliette Van Ypersele, Work Package 1 examines how national labour law systems already create openings for non-productivist time-spaces. Together with our outstanding team of experts from 10 countries (Belgium, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Poland), we are developing a comparative questionnaire to identify and map institutions and mechanisms that – sometimes at the margins – serve to emancipate work from productivist norms and towards more sustainable futures. This workshop served :

• to ensure that the survey is adapted to the specific features of the labour law systems in the different States
• to develop a common understanding of the survey, its structure, questions and the expectations of the ERC research team.

On 12 November 2025, Elise Dermine had the opportunity to participate in a “From science to policy” event organized jointly by the European Research Council (ERC) and the Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA) at the European Parliament: https://erc.europa.eu/news-events/events/research-policy-shaping-sustainable-and-competitive-europe.

Alongside other ERC grantees, she took part in the thematic session on Rethinking Growth and Prosperity.

Constructive exchanges between academics and policymakers are central to building pathways towards sustainable futures that are both ambitious and robust, but also functional and concrete. This observation lies at the heart of the RethinkingWork project.