Expedition Basic Income combines research and social dialogue on the topic of “Unconditional Basic Income” (UBI). To this end, it conducts educational campaigns as well as research projects. The FRIBIS team is focused on the scientific preparation, monitoring and elaboration of the project. The majority of the members of the FRIBIS team are also the ones who initiated and practically implement the project.

It is about referendums on the local and federal state level about the implementation of model experiments on the unconditional basic income. For this purpose, referendums and citizens’ petitions are initiated in the federal states of Hamburg, Berlin and Bremen and in many cities and municipalities by the citizens living there, the aim of which is to start model trials on the UBI.

In this way, the discussion on the UBI is intensified, which is tantamount to an educational campaign, and citizens can have their political will implemented directly democratically via the respective government bodies. The model experiments demanded in this way by the majority of citizens, the political sovereign, are then government projects. This is where the principle of subsidiarity becomes apparent at the political level.

Financing the UBI at the municipal level can possibly be achieved through the federal system of fiscal equalization (federal state fiscal equalization, municipal fiscal equalization) by means of tax revenue reallocation instead of additional tax collection, and can thus be implemented quickly.

The FRIBIS research portion of the project includes the investigation of financing procedures, the design of the pilot projects, and the collection and analysis of data from the overall process and the results of the model tests. This can also be understood as an educational campaign, in that scientific research and public discourse interact in a proactive exchange on the current questions regarding UBI.

Interview in the business magazine enorm with Laura Brämswig on Expedition Grundeinkommen. (February 23rd, 2021)

“We are the expedition“, video-call for the model experiment. (March 1st, 2021)

Interview by Enno Schmidt with Prof. Dr. B. Neumärker on the Expedition Basic Income. (March 11th, 2021)

Research Team

Laura Brämswig
Founder & campaign strategist
e.g. strategy consultant and partner at Ashoka (consulting and development of socio-political projects, various studies on social innovation) and consultant at Boston Consulting Group.
Msc Social & Cultural Psychology (London School of Economics), Bsc Business Psychology and Politics (Leuphana University & Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Leonie Schraven
Lawyer & Business Psychologist
u. A. veedu GmbH, BSP Business School Berlin , Talents4Good GmbH
B.A. Business Psychology, First State Examination in Law

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schupp
Professor at the Institute of Sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin and researcher at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin).
Main areas of research: Empirical social research, social indicators, social structure and social inequality.

Research Team

Lucia Lang
Project manager in political campaigning
Among others Amnesty International, Deutsches Studentenwerk, Federal Ministry of Education and Research
B.A. Cultural Studies (focus on social sciences)

Joy Ponader
Founder & campaign strategist
Among other things co-founding of Mein-Grundeinkommen and Sanktionsfrei as well as the Basic Income Initiative Munich, co-organiser of several basic income congresses.
Joy Ponader has been actively involved with the topic of basic income for 14 years