European Alternatives is a transnational membership organisation promoting democracy, equality and culture beyond the nation state. EA seeks to promote alternative forms of political subjectivity, collective political action and transnational solidarity. EA promotes its objectives by means of public events, the annual TRANSEUROPA Festival, citizens’ dialogues, through campaigns around fundamental rights issues including media freedom, anti-corruption and migrant rights and through research and publications. It is active throughout the European Union and also has projects promoting cultural cooperation and dialogue between Europe, China, South America and the MENA region. EA is organised through a transnational decision-making board giving voice to its members with offices in Paris, London, Berlin, Sofia and Rome. European Alternatives has been awarded the Charlemagne Youth Prize (in 2008) and the Youth Democracy Award by the German Federal Agency for civic education (in 2012).
The TransSOL project is carried out by European Alternatives Ltd. United Kingdom and European Alternatives e.V. Germany/Berlin. For more information, please visit the website http://www.euroalter.com.
Team members
Lorenz
o Marsili is the principal investigator for EA UK. He is the Executive Director and co-founder of European Alternatives. He oversees the three main work areas of EA, arts and culture, participation and campaigns, and is also the spokesperson for the European Citizens Initiative on Media Freedom. He further coordinates a multi-year arts exchange programme between cultural innovators in Brazil, China and Europe, with a focus on promoting South-South cooperation. He has previously worked as arts director of the Transeuropa Festival and editor at Naked Punch magazine. He has degrees in philosophy, sociology and Chinese studies from the University of London. Lorenzo Marsili is an active commentator and public speaker and has appeared on panels around Europe and beyond, recently as keynote speaker at the annual Network of Civic Education of Europe (NECE) meeting in The Hague. He was invited to a session at the annual Free Press Conference in the US on Global Advocacy for Free Media in April 2013, and he spoke at the 5th Subversive Festival in Zagreb (July 2012) about the transformation and diffusing of sovereignty.
Daphne Bülle
sbach is the principal investigator for EA Berlin. She is the Citizenship and Democracy Director at European Alternatives. As Head of this department she takes over the role of coordinating the work of citizens’ participation that EA has been actively promoting through its work on the project ‘People, Power Participation’, in place since 2010. The project ran citizens’ consultations across Europe for three years involving thousands of citizens in a transnational activity that culminated in the drafting of the Citizens Manifesto for European Democracy, Solidarity and Equality in 2013. She began her involvement with European Alternatives as an activist and became co-president of the Cooperative of EA (the grouping of all city coordinators of the local groups of EA) and thereby a member of EA’s principal decision-making body, the Transnational Board. Having founded the German branch of European Alternatives in Berlin in 2012, she is now a full-time member of staff of EA in Berlin. Previously she worked in social science research and the evaluation of government programs. Her main thematic focus was on social programs, fostering local engagement for democracy in rural areas in Germany and fighting right-wing extremism. She has also conducted evaluations in the field of integration policies, urban policies and youth development. Furthermore, she has a background in international humanitarian and development organisations in Kenia, Morocco, Argentina and Belgium. Her academic background is in European Studies and Social and Political Science: She received her Bachelor with a First Class Honours in European Studies with French at King’s College London. She was then awarded a scholarship to study for an MPhil in Modern Society and Global Transformations at the University of Cambridge, UK.