David Bollier

David Bollier is an American activist, scholar, and blogger who is focused on the commons as a new paradigm for re-imagining economics, politics, and culture. He pursues this work as Director of the Reinventing the Commons Program at the Schumacher Center for a New Economics [www.centerforneweconomics.org] (Massachusetts, US), and as co-founder of the Commons Strategies Group, [www.commonsstrategies.org] an international advocacy project.

Bollier has co-organized pioneering international conferences and strategy workshops on the commons and consults regularly with diverse activists and policy experts in the US and Europe. His blog, Bollier.org, is a widely read source of news about the commons, and his book Think Like a Commoner: A Short Introduction to the Life of the Commons [www.thinklikeacommoner.com] (2014), has been translated into six languages. He and co-author Silke Helfrich published Free, Fair and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons in September 2019. Spanish and German editions have been published, and French and Greek translations are underway.

Bollier is an editor or author of many other books on the commons, including Patterns of Commoning (2015) [www.patternsofcommoning.org] and The Wealth of the Commons (2012), [www.wealthofthecommons.org] both with co-editor Silke Helfrich; Green Governance (2013), co-authored with the late Professor Burns Weston; and Viral Spiral (2009), Brand-Name Bullies (2005), and Silent Theft (2002).

In 2012, Bollier received the Bosch Berlin Prize in Public Policy from the American Academy in Berlin for his work on the commons. He co-founded the Washington, D.C. advocacy group Public Knowledge in the early 2000s; collaborated with television writer/producer Norman Lear for twenty-five years on political and public affairs projects; and worked with Ralph Nader in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Bollier lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.