Common Margins
Commons-oriented research through co-creation, ethnography and DIY publishing
Common Margins is an action research initiative that works through co-creation processes and open “do-it-yourself” publishing to explore how communities generate, share and preserve knowledge and cultural artifacts, grounded in and oriented towards the Commons. From zines and other ephemeral formats to experimental collective archives, we treat paper and low-tech materials not as relics or luddite nostalgia but as convivial, appropriate technologies: supporting collaborative ethnography, collective learning and alternative ways of communication in an era of social acceleration and digital automation.
3 interconnected axes
Common Margins is structured around three interconnected axes (co-creation, open infrastructure and collection & analysis) connecting situated practices with shared critical inquiry.
Co-creation processes
Workshops, retreats, and citizen-ethnographic encounters where zine-making and participatory design serve both as processes of inquiry and as tools for collective expression.
Open infrastructure
Simple, accessible tools and materials to design, share and remix research outcomes and methods under open knowledge licenses – treating publishing technologies and co-creation practices as a commons.
Collection & analysis
Digitising, archiving and studying zines (co-created and historical) as well as co-creation toolkits to understand themes, aesthetics and networks of independent thinking.
Transversal principles
- Copyleft & open science exploring the benefits and limits of openness across tools, data and other co-creation outputs.
- Peer research: research with and for close communities, beyond extractive citizen science models.
- Pedagogical renewal to reclaim deep reading and critical writing across education / learning contexts.
Conceptual pillars
Algorithmic caution & analog creation
Against the current digital push toward automation and speed, we embrace cautious, critical engagements with AI while resisting extractive and authoritarian tendencies in technology. Typewriters, collage, hand-made layouts and obfuscation foreground slowness, error and intimacy – reasserting human creativity, transdisciplinary perspectives and less-extractive modes of knowledge.
Open knowledge & relational infrastructures
Openness is not only a matter of licenses or data, but also built through 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.
Bibliodiversity & (s)low technologies
We treat zines and co-creation toolkits as vital forms of knowledge. Inspired by bibliodiversity, we value plural voices, formats and aesthetics. Paper is a “slow technology”: modest, but resilient and convivial. Ephemeral print cultures offer sustainable ways to share memory, creativity and collective meaning.
Main research methods
- Co-creation in the field: workshops and participatory design encounters where zine-making and prototyping are both method and collective expression.
- Analyzing content & form: studying themes, aesthetics, storytelling and contexts across co-created outcomes.
- Conversations & networks: interviews & focus groups with social actors and authors, collectors, editors, students, users, activists.
- Collective archiving & publishing: co-created repositories and a (forthcoming) 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 zines and other paper-based co-creations with communities in situated contexts, we explore how knowledge and meaning emerge in shared processes rather than isolated observation. The project axes and methods connect qualitative research with everyday creativity and local perspectives. Small-scale, human-made printing and publishing becomes both a mirror and a method: reflecting collective experiences while also contributing to shape new ones.
We sustain practices that are slow, convivial and open, bridging memory and slow-tech, research and community life, new narratives and critical pedagogy, in response to the urgent need to reclaim focused attention, analog reading and AI-free imagination.