Seed exchange

Regulating technologies in diverse development contexts – looking back to look forward

by Adrian Ely, Vanesa Lowenstein and Yuhan Bao As part of the STEPS Centre’s final event on 8 December, we’ll be reflecting on the changes since the Centre’s project ‘Rethinking…

waves on a beach

Waves of challenging research for sustainability

by Patricia Pérez Belmont, Umbela Transformaciones Sostenibles How can research methods inform and catalyse change towards more sustainable worlds? Last month, the STEPS Centre held an online event to launch…

a woman in a mask walks in front of a shuttered storefront in Buenos Aires

Coronavirus, crisis and the real Argentine economy: post-pandemic challenges

This article was first published in Spanish in the newspaper Pagina12 on 10 May 2020. Read the original article A window of opportunity is opening to reshape the organization of…

Experimentation to action: how Bioleft is helping to grow an open source seed culture

by Almendra Cremaschi, Patrick van Zwanenberg & Anabel Marin The seed breeding initiative Bioleft has received funding to work with more varieties of seeds in Argentina, and to develop a…

What can transdisciplinarity give back to communities?

By Simone Omori, Leandro Giatti and Saurabh Arora The water-energy-food and environment nexus (w-e-f-e nexus) is a matter of understanding and acting on interdependent areas of activity. By directing attention to…

Call For Papers: International Research Symposium on Post-Automation

International Research Symposium Post-Automation? Exploring Democratic Alternatives to Industry 4.0 11-13 September 2019 Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, Brighton, UK About the Symposium We are delighted to…

Enabling Innovations

At the launch of STEPS America Latina in 2015, one of the themes that we focused on at our opening event was what we called ‘enabling’ innovations. These are new…

The challenges of open science

On Friday, November 2nd, the Argentine Congress of Open and Citizen Science (CIACIAR) was held at the University of San Martín, organized by CENIT and Cientópolis, and sponsored by STEPS…

Bioleft open seeds transference. Photo: Ana María García.

From digital commons to nurturing social relationships: How to practice open source ideas with seeds?

What happens when you try to transfer open source ideas beyond the digital world? In Argentina we organized a workshop on open hardware and immediately afterward an event on open seeds. Some of the difficulties involved in transferring open source ideas from virtual to more material settings, and from communities of practitioners comfortable with networked, digital culture, to those that are less so, were readily apparent.