Salon 97 The Maternal Gift Economy from Matriarchal Economic and Anthropological Perspectives

Francesca Lulli

Francesca Lulli, Italy (PhD), is a socio-anthropologist, a trainer in self-funded communities and community development. Member of the network International Feminist for a Gift Economy, she has been collaborating since 2015 with the Feminist Study Center for the Gift Economy of Rome (Italy). She has taught at La Sapienza University and in several Master’s programs. She has worked with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and several NGOs, mainly on issues related to education, social and economic inclusion of women and youth, and gender issues. She wrote the book Microfinance, Informal Economies and Associationism. A Feminine Perspective, (Editori Riuniti 2008) and several articles. She has been involved in research and evaluation studies on popular and gift economies, community building dynamics, civil society, intergenerational women’s relationships and grassroots women’s associationism, mainly in Sub-Saharan Africa. She collaborates on Sabina Santovetti's She-Ede programs of Gaia Education and she has specifically dealt with the economic section.

Nergiz De Baere

Nergiz is a writer, artist, and matriarchal thinker whose work reaches audiences through her platform From a Young Matriarch. She descends from Avar ancestry in the Caucasus, and understands her work as a reclamation of the matriarchal wisdom carried by her grandmothers. These women sustained life and community through empire and erasure without ever being honored for it. Holding a B.A. in Economics from Barnard College, one of her work's core arguments is that the maternal gift economy is a functioning economic system that can be implemented now. She is the author of 365 Ways to Save the Planet, and her forthcoming book Matriarchy is already accumulating preorders. Her work, which she describes as composing matriarchal dreamscapes, bridges artistry, economics, and cultural theory to bring matriarchy to the popular imagination.