Rate My Professor Ester Barinaga

Ester Barinaga is Professor at the Sten K. Johnson Centre for Entrepreneurship within Lund University School of Economics and Management. Her research focuses on social innovation and entrepreneurship processes driven by citizen initiatives responding to inequality, environmental damage, and financial crises. She studies activist entrepreneurs, community groups, cooperatives, grassroots innovators, and social entrepreneurs who experiment with collective action to build sustainable economies, inclusive cities, and resilient communities. Core themes encompass alternative economic and social imaginaries, bottom-up organizing, complementary and community currencies, and tools for sustainable development, contributing to UN Sustainable Development Goals including no poverty, reduced inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, and climate action.

Barinaga obtained her PhD in Business Administration from the Stockholm School of Economics in 2002, with a dissertation titled 'Levelling Vagueness: A Study of Cultural Diversity in an International Project Group.' She holds an MBA and a Master's in International Management from ESADE Business School. Her career trajectory includes researcher at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (2002-2006), visiting scholar at Stanford University (2007-2008), associate professor and professor with special responsibilities at Copenhagen Business School (2007-2013), and professor at Lund University since 2019. She was awarded a three-year post-doctoral scholarship by the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation. Key publications feature the monograph 'Remaking Money for a Sustainable Future: Money Commons' (2024, Bristol University Press), 'Tinkering with Malleable Grassroots Infrastructures: Kenyan Local Currencies in Informal Settlements' (2023, Urban Geography), 'Micro-finance in a Developed Welfare State: A Hybrid Technology for the Government of the Outcast' (2014, Geoforum), and 'Politicising Social Entrepreneurship: Three Social Entrepreneurial Rationalities Toward Social Change' (2013, Journal of Social Entrepreneurship). Barinaga founded the social venture Förorten i Centrum (2010-2020), coordinates master's courses on re-imagining capitalism and money, supervises PhD students, delivers public lectures and workshops, and leads projects such as DECODE on decentralized energy communities funded by the Swedish Energy Agency.