The Fifth Wave Institute
Building better care.
“There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” - Octavia E. Butler
The Fifth Wave Institute is a think-and-act-tank dedicated to building a future of fair, valued and collective caregiving.
The Fifth Wave Institute est un laboratoire d’idées et d’actions dédié à la construction de meilleurs systèmes de soin.
The problem
We all care, and are all cared for. Some, more than others – care is one of the most universal yet most unequally distributed of human activities. Rooted in the misogynistic devaluation of care work, this inadequate organisation traps millions into lives of precarity and exhaustion. It denies vulnerability and interdependence as central pillars of the social fabric: the default human agent is male, autonomous, able-bodied, adult, white, and economically productive, leaving many of those who do not fit that model to make do with institutions ill-adjusted to them. Patriarchal violence and systems of thinking therefore cannot be dismantled without a fundamental shift in the structure and value of care.
Our vision
Founded in September of 2025, the Fifth Wave Institute believes in the care society: a concrete horizon of mutual support, solidarity, dignity and non-domination. Only in such a world can all humans have the opportunity to thrive. As an inclusive agenda undeniably rooted in the common good, the care society has the potential to federate broad appeal for a feminism that truly works for all, and for a progressive politics based on relationality rather than altercation. Through our thinking, research, policy change and physical infrastructure projects, that is the world we are working to build.
Our mission
As a think-and-act-tank, our mission is a hybrid one. First, we aim to center the feminist care agenda in public thinking around the futures of care. Our systems of care and their failures are going to take up an increasingly big place in public debates in decades to come, because of demographic changes and a growing acknowledgement of the often dire state of care in nursing homes, daycares, foster homes, birthing rooms, and hospitals. Our research and narrative change work aims to ensure that care ethics are systematically mobilised in discussions of how to build better care systems, showing this approach as essential to imagining truly just and relational alternatives – especially in spheres of society, like law and medicine, where such modes of thinking are often still marginalised. It also aims to equip professionals with the intellectual and practical tools to enact meaningful change.
Second, we aim to work with local institutions to design and scale alternatives to our current systems of care. These will directly benefit the communities they will be implanted in, and help produce data-backed evidence that the care society is an attainable and desirable horizon, both for gender equality and the common good. While our narrative change work has a global scope, this ‘act’ branch focuses on France for now, to ensure that what we build is sustainably embedded within national infrastructure. Our flagship initiative in this respect will consist in implementing physical ‘Care Blocs’ in French cities. Created in Bogotá, this model’s transformative approach to redistributing care has well-documented positive effects on its beneficiaries and their communities, including reduced violence and increased gender equality.
Our work
Research. We analyse local and national alternatives to current care systems, in order to learn from, adapt, and replicate them. When it comes to social innovation, the “local initiative —> replication —> integration into the national infrastructure” pipeline is a tried and tested way to drive society-wide change. We believe in starting small, and scaling what works.
Interviews. We publish interviews with people building the futures of care, whether through their practice or their thinking. People who make up for the harshness of our systems with creativity and passion. And because the best insights on care come from caring, we ask all our interviewees: “Who do you care for, and who cares for you?”
Essays. We work to shift narratives around care, showing that humans are interdependent, vulnerable, and better set up to flourish when supported by resilient care systems. We aim to elevate the importance of caregiving in all its forms, as essential public infrastructure, as a structuring principle of social life, and as a central concern of political decision-making.
Events. We curate spaces for bold thinking about care. Subscribe to our newsletter to be notified of upcoming events.
Ground action. We aim to work with organisations, local councils, health and education departments, and similar institutions to help them design, build, replicate and scale alternatives to current care systems — centered around bringing the ‘Care Blocs’ model to French cities.
Our values
As our name reveals, we are a feminist research institute, with a strong intellectual debt to the many feminist writers, activists and academics who have long enriched and questioned our ideas about care. We are committed to advancing reproductive justice, acknowledging the vital role that Black and queer feminists in particular have played — and are still playing — in that fight.
We are a global platform, aiming to bring into dialogue a variety of perspectives on care from across the world. Care is about as universal a human activity as it gets, as there is much to be learned from innovations taking place everywhere. Though we only publish in French and English at this stage, we aim to translate more of our materials into other languages once we have the resources to do so.
Care is not politically neutral — it is deeply marked by inequality of gender, race, and class. We aim to highlight this in our research, and shed light on the intersection of fairer care with environmental justice, LGBTQ+ rights, disability rights, racial justice, and more.
Team
TFWI was founded in September of 2025 by Mélina Magdelénat. A graduate from the University of Oxford, her research interests lie at the intersection of masculinity and affective education - how men learn to care, how different societies teach them to care, and how we can design better paths for young men into caregiving roles.
The Fifth Wave Institute is onboarding its first team of writers on a rolling basis. If you’re a student, graduate or early career researcher and you’d like to write for us, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Get involved
Just like caregiving itself, building the futures of care is a collective effort. We are actively seeking to partner with other organisations, collectives, and researchers working in any segment of the care sector.
If you resonate with our mission and would like to be a part of the journey, please email Mélina Magdelénat at melina@fifthwaveinstitute.com.
If you would simply like to follow along and learn about the futures of care, subscribe to our newsletter.
