Silke Helfrich

Silke Helfrich has studied romance languages and pedagogy at the Karl-Marx- University in Leipzig and is currently finishing Economy and Social Science studies (with focus on the Commons and Patterns Theory) at Cusanus University. Since mid of the 1990s activities in the field of development politics, from 1996 to 1998 head of Heinrich Böll Foundation Thuringia and until 2007 head of the regional office of Heinrich Böll Foundation in San Salvador and Mexico City for Mexico/Central America/Cuba, focusing on globalisation, gender and human rights. Since 2007 she works as independent author, activist and scholar. Helfrich is the editor and co-author of several books on the Commons, among them: Who Owns the World? The Rediscovery of the Commons, Munich 2009, editor of Elinor Ostrom: Was mehr wird, wenn wir teilen, Munich 2011. Together with David Bollier and hbf: The Wealth of the Commons beyond Market and State, Amherst/MA, 2012 and most recently with David Bollier and Heinrich-Böll-Foundation: The Patterns of Commoning, Amherst/MA, 2015). She is cofounder of Commons Strategies Group and the Commons-Institut e.V. and the primary author of the German speaking CommonsBlog.