Louis Volont

Louis Volont is a Belgian sociologist. The central axis running through Louis’ research consists of: Culture, Commons, Cities. He joined ACT in the autumn of 2021 on a Fulbright post-doctoral scholarship.

From 2013 until 2016, Louis has been a research fellow at the Société Mutuelle des Artistes (Mutual Society of Artists): a Brussels-based cooperative supporting artists and cultural workers through knowledge exchange and social support. In that context, and funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Louis refined the theme of ‘sustainable creativity’. This endeavour can be retrieved in Starting a Creative Career (2013, Lannoo), Third Spaces, Shared Artist Ateliers and Coworking in Belgium (2014, SMart) and Creativity under Pressure (2018, in Art & Identity Politics, with P. Gielen and W. Van Andel).

In 2016, Louis became a doctoral research fellow at the Culture Commons Quest Office (CCQO) at the University of Antwerp (Faculty of Arts). Mobilizing Henri Lefebvre’s theoretical lens, Louis taxonomized activist-architectural strategies of urban commoning, through case studies in London, Berlin, Paris and Antwerp. The result was his PhD dissertation Shapeshifting: The Cultural Production of Common Space (Antwerp: Universitas, 2021).

He is a regular speaker at research symposia, both inside and outside the academy, on the themes of cultural commoning and artistic production. He has co-organized various scientific symposia, such as Artistic Constitutions of the Common City (Antwerp, 2017); How to Make Creativity Sustainable? (Berlin, 2018); and City Aesthetics & Citizenship (Antwerp, 2018). His work has been published in City & Community, Social Inclusion, Antipode and Space & Culture (in print).

Currently Louis prepares, with Thijs Lijster (University Groningen) and Pascal Gielen (University of Antwerp), The Rise of the Common City: Cultural Commoning in Urban Environments, a reader evolving around the artistic dimension of urban activism (Brussels: Academic & Scientific Publishers, 2022).