About Me

My name is Francesco Gimelli. I was born in 1986 and grew up between Italy and Australia—two places that shaped how I see the world, though neither quite felt like home in the way I imagined home should feel. Perhaps that restlessness, that sense of being between worlds, is part of what led me here.

I've spent most of my adult life in universities and research institutions. I hold a PhD in Human Geography from Monash University, where I studied water access, human wellbeing, and the freedoms people need to live dignified lives. Before that, I studied religion, environment, and sustainability across universities in Australia. For years, I taught graduate students about natural resource management and the philosophical foundations of sustainability, helped design research projects, wrote academic papers about equity and ecological limits.

That work mattered to me. It still does. But somewhere along the way, I realized that writing about these ideas wasn't enough. The gap between what I knew intellectually and how I was living grew too wide to ignore. I came to see that universities weren't the places where genuine alternatives were being explored—they were places where alternatives were being discussed, analyzed, theorized about, but rarely lived. And I realized something else, something in the spirit of Taoism: if we're speaking about sustainability, it's because we don't have it. The very need to name it, to study it, to teach courses about it, reveals its absence.

In my mid-20s, I spent extended periods living in Buddhist monasteries in Thailand, Burma, and Sri Lanka. Those experiences taught me something universities couldn't: that simplicity isn't deprivation, that community doesn't require conformity, that meaningful life doesn't come from accumulation. But I eventually left monastic life, re-entered the academic world, built a career. The tension between those two paths never quite resolved.

In 2023, I returned to Italy after many years in Australia. I now live in Reggio Emilia with my partner Andrea, teaching English and doing translation work. In 2025, I spent half the year as a volunteer at Natural Farm Shizen in the Marche region—a farm run according to the principles of Masanobu Fukuoka. I'll return there in 2026 to help manage the farm and its volunteer programs. This experience has been formative: learning to work with soil and seasons, to coordinate groups of people with different skills and temperaments, to manage the inevitable conflicts that arise when humans try to work together toward shared goals, to harvest and transform what the land offers.

I have many interests—history, philosophy, languages, cooking, spirituality, hiking—and I've lived in many countries. I speak Italian and English as native languages, Portuguese and Spanish fluently. I'm comfortable with complexity and ambiguity, perhaps too comfortable sometimes.

Why This Project?

The honest answer is that I don't fully know. What I do know is that I've felt, with increasing intensity, that we're at a threshold moment. The civilization we've built is fundamentally maladapted to the world we actually inhabit. This isn't catastrophism—it's basic observation.

My engagement with collapse literature has deepened this conviction. I'm currently preparing the Italian translation of William Ophuls' Immoderate Greatness—a concise, clear-eyed analysis of why civilizations fail. The more deeply I've engaged with this literature, the more confident I've become not only in collapse's inevitability, but—dare I say it—in its desirability. What has come to be is not all that great in many ways. My hope is not that this civilization might endure, but that it might be replaced by something better.

And I've become convinced that a better way of living is not only necessary but possible.

I don't think what I'm proposing is original. I'm joining an ever-growing number of people who are exercising the three freedoms: to move, to disobey, to create new social worlds. But I've come to believe that existing alternatives—ecovillages, intentional communities, back-to-the-land movements—don't go far enough. What's required isn't just new approaches or better practices, but new cultures. Cultures that align with how life actually works, with the Seven Laws that govern all living systems.

That realization led me to articulate the ideas in this proposal. The Seminary isn't a utopian fantasy or an escape plan. It's an experiment—a seed-bed where something genuinely different might grow.

What I Bring (And What I Don't)

I bring intellectual frameworks from years of studying sustainability, human wellbeing, and social research. My professional background in monitoring and evaluation has made me a critical thinker, someone who carefully considers whether proposed actions will actually lead to intended outcomes—this aligns closely with the Law of Cause and Effect. I ask: what kind of causes are we applying? Are they similar in kind to the effects we seek? Are they of sufficient scale?

I bring some practical experience from farming, group coordination, and conflict navigation. I bring languages—Italian and English natively, Portuguese and Spanish fluently. I bring teaching ability, a capacity for systems thinking, enthusiasm for hard work and a tolerance for discomfort. I bring a growing library on collapse, ecology, and alternative cultures, and the willingness to translate these ideas—literally and figuratively—into practice.

I also bring the particular gifts and challenges of being an Enneagram Type 1. This means a core orientation toward Perfection—a deep desire to align actions with principles, to create something genuinely coherent and well-designed, to maintain high standards and see things through properly. But it's a double-edged sword: I can be overly critical (of myself and others), struggle with letting things be "good enough," become rigid when flexibility is needed, get caught in idealism when pragmatism serves better. I'm learning to work with these tendencies—to harness the drive toward excellence while softening the harsh edges. Transparency requires acknowledging both the gift and the shadow.

What I don't bring is a complete vision or a guaranteed path to success. I'm not a charismatic leader with all the answers. I'm not offering certainty. What I'm offering is a framework, a direction, and a commitment to walk that path with others willing to take the risk.

Why Me?

I've asked myself this repeatedly. Why am I the one proposing this? Wouldn't someone with more farming experience, more community-building expertise, more practical skills be better suited?

Perhaps. But maybe that's not how these things work. Maybe it's precisely because I've lived between worlds—between theory and practice, between cultures, between contemplation and action—that I can articulate something that needs articulating. Maybe my combination of intellectual training and growing practical experience, my comfort with both ideas and dirt, my capacity to hold complexity while still moving forward—maybe that's enough to begin.

Or maybe I'm simply the one willing to put this invitation into the world and see who responds.

If any of this resonates with you, if you see yourself as a potential companion on this journey, I'd like to hear from you.