EcoWelfare 1st Conference 2026 in Brussels
The Sustainable Welfare and Eco-Social Policy Network held its first EcoWelfare Conference in Brussels from 9 to 11 September 2026. Around 100 researchers, policymakers and civil society representatives gathered at Usquare, ULB’s campus in a former police station. The event was organised by the Sustainable Welfare and Eco Social Policy Network in collaboration with the Université libre de Bruxelles and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) and the research projects MERGE, EUJUST and WELRISCC.
Revisiting the field
The opening plenary roundtable, moderated by Katharina Zimmermann, brought together Tuuli Hirvilammi (Tampere University), Katharina Bohnenberger (BOKU University), Benedetta Cotta (University of Padua), Paolo Graziano (University of Padua), Vincent Gengnagel (Magdeburg University), Amandine Crespy (ULB) and Tiago Moreira Ramalho (ULB). All of them witnessed the emergence of the field from early on and were invited to reflect on its development so far.
Tiago Moreira Ramalho challenged assumptions that eco-social policies are inherently win-win: “We should stop assuming that eco-social policies are necessarily positive-sum […] transformation will also involve real conflicts and losses, and we need to confront those rather than retreat into a ‘kumbaya’ version of eco-social policy.” Vincent Gengnagel made a related point: policies should be studied relationally, looking not only at how they work but at “the forces organised against them,” since the field has to take conflict and contestation seriously.
Paolo Graziano raised a methodological concern: normative and analytical work belong together but must stay clearly seperated, since blurring the two “weakens both scholarship and its usefulness beyond academia.” Benedetta Cotta asked about durability: whether policies built under one political constellation can “travel over time” as governments and priorities change. Katharina Bohnenberger argued that sustainable welfare is not only an empirical object but a way of thinking, and that the field now needs new analytical tools that take seriously how social policy is embedded in ecological systems, rather than more empirical studies with existing ones.
Tuuli Hirvilammi closed the session with a sharp open question: how deep a transformation is the field actually seeking: “How far towards the root causes do we want to go as a field?” Amandine Crespy struck a more grounded note in response: „Breaking the silo between environmental issues and social issues has just begun, we need to work more on how existing welfare states can be used and changed to tackle eco-social risks and inequalities.“
The conference aimed to provide a space where these topics could be discussed in detail, but also where networking was facilitated, where book ideas with Catherine Elgar could be discussed and where participants found fun and friendship.
Papers, Panels and Peer Review
The parallel programme delivered 62 academic papers across sessions on degrowth and just transitions, policy integration, eco-social risks in labour, health, housing and energy, the eco-social role of the state, European and global governance, postgrowth welfare and labour market change.
Several sessions used “Korpi’s Rule”: authors presented and discussed each other’s papers instead of their own, sharpening feedback and forcing engagement between work that might not otherwise be read together. Academics and civil society actors were also able to hold academic workshops at the conference, which added more focused formats, including sessions on rethinking work through labour law, participatory policy design, and governing just transitions from the top “wealth, polluter elites and inequality in social-ecological transformation”.
From Research to Policy
Two policy sessions asked directly whether “affordability” is a genuine eco-social agenda or a buzzword, and how research can better shape policy implementation, drawing on cases from Spain and Belgium.
The highlight was the policy roundtable, “Leveraging Knowledge for Just Transition Policymaking” moderated by Sotiria Theodoropoulou (European Trade Union Institute), brought together Andrea Casamenti (SOLIDAR), Lea Das Neves Bicho (European Trade Union Confederation), Laurent Standaert (Green European Foundation) and Frank Siebern-Thomas (European Commission) and Katharina Zimmermann (University Hamburg).
The discussion centred on how “knowledge producers” and “knowledge users” can help each other, rather than talk past one another. A recurring figure was the “broker”: someone positioned between researchers and policymakers, matchmaking between the two worlds and fluent in both. This kind of knowledge brokering needs a mutual language and regular contact rather than one-off consultations. Nevertheless, participants agreed on structural constraints: time, money and staff capacity are scarce on all sides. The panel closed on accessibility and framing… and on investing in institutional infrastructure to rebuild public trust.
Looking Ahead
The first EcoWelfare Conference showed a field broad enough to hold rigorous academic debate and policy dialogue in the same room: while, as the opening plenary made clear, still arguing openly about how deep its ambitions should go. The closing session brought the three days to an end with a warm goodbye from Tuuli Hirvilammi and Matteo Mandelli, who encouraged the audience to share their vision for future Network priorities, such as studying conflict and class struggle, addressing the intersection of activism and policy, and developing an own academic journal – while reaffirming the network’s commitment to horizontal governance.
Looking ahead, the community is preparing for the next summer school in 2027 and the 2028 biannual conference, ensuring the continuity of this vital intellectual and collective space.