Mirte Jepma
PhD Researcher
Environment
My research examines how communities self-organise housing and energy in line with values such as community, autonomy, care and ecology. Using a feminist political ecology lens, I examine who and how these alternative housing and energy solutions are created, maintained and, if possible, expanded.
Using narrative analysis and ethnographic observations, my work looks at those who do the work of establishing alternatives to the capitalist market economies that dominate housing and energy provision.
Building on my PhD research and in collaboration with the housing activist group the Baaibuurt Collective, I directed the documentary The Sinking Fringe (de Zinkende Rafelrand, 2025) that captures the fight for housing justice in Amsterdam by following different alternative communities faced with eviction due to urban renewal plans. The project critically questions whose voices are left out in urban development.
RESEARCH FOCUS
Self-organisation, labour, communities and the right to the city
Tucano Frames Film Collective
Mirte is the co-founder of Tucano Frames Film Collective, a grassroots film collective developing movies on community voices, resistance and inequalities.
