Common Margins

Research through co-creation, experimental ethnography and DIY publishing

Common Margins is an action research initiative exploring how communities (re)create, share and preserve knowledge through DIY publishing. From zines and chapbooks to experimental collective archives, we approach paper not as nostalgia, but as a convivial, slow technology for thinking, learning and organising together in times of accelerated automation.

Our three interconnected axes

Co-creation

Workshops, retreats and citizen-ethnographic encounters where zine-making is both a method of inquiry and a tool of collective expression.

Open infrastructure

Simple, accessible tools and methods to design, share and remix publications under open licenses —treating publishing tech as a commons.

Collection & analysis

Digitising, archiving and studying zines (co-created or historical) to understand themes, aesthetics and networks of independent publishing.

Transversal principles

  • Copyleft & open science across tools, data and outputs.
  • “Friends Science”: research with and for close communities, beyond extractive citizen-science models.
  • Pedagogical innovation to reclaim attention, reading and critical thinking across education levels.

Our conceptual pillars

1) Bibliodiversity & slow paper technologies

We treat zines and chapbooks as vital forms of knowledge. Inspired by bibliodiversity, we value plural voices, formats and aesthetics. Paper is a “slow technology”: modest, resilient and convivial. Ephemeral print cultures offer sustainable ways to share memory, creativity and collective meaning.

2) Algorithmic refusal & analog creation

Against the push toward automation and speed, we experiment with refusal. Typewriters, collage, hand-made layouts and obfuscation foreground slowness, error and intimacy —reasserting human creativity, feminist infrastructures and non-extractive modes of knowledge.

3) Open knowledge & relational infrastructures

Openness is not only licenses or data —it’s relationships of care, accountability and collective authorship. We share tools, methods and publications under open conditions, linking analog/digital practices, community archiving and experimental zine-journal formats.

Our research methods

  1. Co-creation in the field: workshops and community encounters where zine-making is both method and collective expression.
  2. Analyzing content & form: studying themes, aesthetics, storytelling and contexts across co-created and historical zines.
  3. Conversations & networks: interviews/focus groups with authors, collectors, micro-editorials and other actors.
  4. Citizen science & collective publishing: co-created repositories and a peer-reviewed, print-only journal in zine format.

Why it matters

Common Margins is collaborative ethnography through co-creation and rapid publishing. By making and studying publications with communities, we explore how knowledge and meaning emerges in shared processes rather than isolated observation. Our axes (co-creation, open infrastructures and collection & analysis) connect action research with everyday creativity. Small-scale, human-made publishing becomes both a mirror and a method: reflecting collective experiences while also shaping new ones.

We sustain practices that are slow, convivial and open —bridging memory and slow-tech, research and community life, and critical pedagogy with the urgent need to reclaim attention, reading and imagination.