Mikaela Loach

Mikaela Loach is a Jamaican-British acclaimed author, climate justice organiser, and speaker, recognised as one of the most influential women in the UK climate movement. Mikaela’s work is deeply rooted in community organising. Her activism includes organising with grassroots climate movements. Mikaela is the best-selling author of It’s Not That Radical: Climate Action To Transform Our World, a compelling call for climate justice published in April 2023.

Charlotte Van den Broeck

Charlotte Van den Broeck (Turnhout, Belgium, 1991) made her debut in 2015 with the poetry collection ‘Kameleon’, awarded the Herman De Coninck Debut Prize. In 2017, she published ‘Nachtroer’, for which she received the triennial Paul Snoek Prize for the best Dutch-language collection. On stage, she seeks a performative approach to poetry, focusing on ‘sayability’ and physicality. Her prose debut ‘Waagstukken’ was published in October 2019 and her new book ‘Een Vlam Tasmaanse Tijgers’ on 1 October 2024. 

Nora Bouazzouni

Nora Bouazzouni is a freelance journalist, writer and translator living in Paris. She works mainly on food, gender and series, through articles, videos and podcasts. She has published three essays, ‘’Eat the rich – Class Struggle goes through the plate‘’ (2023), ‘’ Steaksism – Putting an end to the myth of the vegan and the meat-eater‘’ (2021) and ‘’Faiminisme – When sexism comes to the table‘’ (2017), published by Nouriturfu.

Chris Keulemans

Chris Keulemans is a travelling writer. Home base: Amsterdam-North. His latest book, Verzet (Resistance), is about the fighters, the thinkers, the victims and the leaders he meets along the way. He stood in the squares of the revolution in Beirut, Jakarta, Kyiv and Baghdad. ‘An encouragement to anyone who wants to say no to the status quo, and yes to a world with less injustice.’ (NRC)

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz is a historian of science, technology and the environment. After lectureships at Imperial College London and King’s College, he is now a CNRS researcher at the Centre de Recherches Historiques de l’EHESS. He is the author of several books, including Happy Apocalypse, (2012), The Shock of the Anthropocene with Christophe Bonneuil and Chaos in the Heavens (2020) with Fabien Locher. He has just published More and more and more. An All Consuming History of Energy (Penguin, 2024).

Erica Benner

Erica Benner is a political philosopher and historian of ideas. Born in Tokyo, she grew up in Japan and the UK and has taught at Oxford, Yale, and the LSE. Her biography of Machiavelli Be Like the Fox (2017) was shortlisted for the Elizabeth Longford Prize and a BBC Book of the Week, while her latest book, ADVENTURES IN DEMOCRACY: The Turbulent World of People Power (Allen Lane 2024), is a Financial Times pick for What to Read in 2024.

Hind Fraihi

Hind Fraihi is a journalist for Apache and a columnist for De Tijd and De Lage Landen. She earned fame for her book Undercover in Little Morocco, in which she recorded the rise of jihad in Molenbeek back in 2005. Her particular interest is in various forms of extremism, polarisation and diversity. She recently published the essay Antipode, on excesses and polarisation. In it, she takes a close look at the hot topics of the extreme right, Islamism, ecological extremism and woke extremism.

Eva Rovers

As a writer and founder of Bureau Burgerberaad, Eva Rovers works towards a ‘democratically fit’ society. That is a society in which everyone – regardless of age, gender, education or status – feels and knows that they can make a difference. In her book ‘ Nu is het aan ons’ (Now it’s up to us), Eva argues for climate citizen councils, in order to let society develop climate policy. Indeed, numerous examples worldwide show that residents are quite capable of coming up with viable solutions to the biggest challenges of our time. 

Isabelle Fremeaux

Isabelle Fremeaux is an educator, facilitator and author. She was Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Birkbeck College-University of London (UK) where she worked for 10 years, before leaving academia to embrace freedom and collective life. Engaged in social movements for social and ecological justice for almost 20 years, she has facilitated assemblies gathering several hundred people, co-organised international mobilisations and climate camps, trained thousands of people to reinvent modes of disobedience… She has been living on the zad of Notre Dame des Landes since 2016. With Jay Jordan, she cofounded and co-facilitates the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (www.labo.zone) and has co-written the book/film Les Sentiers de l’Utopie (Zones/La Découverte, 2011) and We are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself : Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones (Vagabonds/Pluto/Journal of Aesthetics & Protest, 2021).

Khaoula Stiti

Khaoula Stiti is a decolonial researcher and feminist with a migrant background, based in Brussels. She holds a PhD in Building Art and Urbanism, with her doctoral research focusing on the intersection of colonial heritage, participatory practices, and digital media. Currently, she closely examines issues related to coloniality, anthropology, and the inequalities imposed by universities in the Global North on researchers from the Global South, thus weaving a multidimensional narrative throughout her academic journey.

Maxime Geens

After a career in food as an organic market seller, market gardener and facilitator around political food, Maxime Geens joined the team of the bakery Le Pain Levé in May 2023. Le Pain Levé is an organic, associative, self-managed and activist bakery. Since the bakery opened three years ago, the team of Pain Levé has practiced a differentiated pricing system to be accessible to as many people as possible. The bakery also builds links with residents and associations in the neighborhood by organizing bread workshops, meetings, and parties. The bakery fights for an anti-capitalist system of production and consumption, and strives to ensure that everyone has access to quality food.

Lara Ferrante

Lara Ferrante is a staff member at Oikos and co-author of Enough. She graduated as an engineer-architect and also obtained a master’s degree in Conflict & Development studies, in which she wrote a master’s thesis on degrowth. She is fully committed to accelerating the transition to a socially and ecologically fair world.

Nozizwe Dube

Nozizwe Dube is a PhD candidate in European and anti-discrimination law at Maastricht University. She holds a Master’s degree in Law from KU Leuven. She did internships at the Belgian Constitutional Court and the United Nations in New York. During her studies, she was coordinator of UNDIVIDED, a student platform working around decolonisation, gender, LGBTQ+ students and intersectionality. She also co-founded Karibu African Circle Leuven: a student association that provides a home for students with African roots in Leuven. She has written opinion pieces for, among others, MO* Magazine and Samenleving en Politiek.

Florian Malzacher

Florian Malzacher is a curator, writer and dramaturg. Since 2021 he hosts The Art of Assembly, a series of lectures on the potential of gathering in art and activism. He was artistic director of Impulse Theater Festival in Cologne, Dusseldorf and Mulheim (2013-2017), and co-curator of steirischer herbst festival in Graz, Austria (2006-2012). His books and essays have been translated into more than 15 languages. His most recent publication is The Art of Assembly. Political Theatre Today (2023).

Lara Staal

Lara Staal is a researcher, curator, theatre maker and writer. Her work deals with how theatre can provide a platform for political reflection and mobilisation. She likes to make connections between different domains. As house director at NTGent, she signed for committed performances such as ‘Dissident’ or ‘Serdi’.

Sophie Howe

Described by The Guardian as ‘the World’s First Minister for the Unborn’ and by The New Statesman as leading a Welsh plot to save the world, Sophie Howe was the first Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, the only role of its kind in the world. She held Government to account on how their decisions affect future generations and has influenced other countries to follow suit including the UN.  Named as one of the UK’s Top 100 Changemakers and at number 5 in the BBC Women’s Power List, she is not afraid to call out the madness of short term decision making and is known for being a straight talking and inspirational advocate for those yet to be born.

Brigitte Herremans

Brigitte Herremans is a postdoctoral researcher at the Human Rights Centre of Ghent University where she focuses on the struggle for justice in Syria and Palestine. Her PhD research (2019-2023) focused on the potential of art to make injustice visible in the Syrian context. From 2002 to 2018, she worked as Middle East policy officer at Broederlijk Delen and Pax Christi Flanders. In 2016, she published the book Israël en Palestina. De kaarten op tafel (Israel and Palestine. The cards on the table’). From 2017 to 2018, she worked as policy officer Middle East and North Africa at BOZAR.

Anuna De Wever

Anuna De Wever

Harriët Bergman

Harriët Bergman is a philosopher and activist. Her first experience of direct action was when students occupied a university building for 6 weeks in 2015 against neoliberalisation and mismanagement. Since then, she has been involved in various climate justice groups as well as movements against racism and for housing rights. She is involved with Stroomversnellers, Tractie and Jacobin NL, and aims to finish her PhD at Antwerp University this year. She writes about disobedience, activism, emotions, and the stories we tell about power and change.

Cristian Raggio

Cristian Raggio is originally from Chili. Having studied economics and geography, his career path combines research and field work, manual and intellectual, always close to concrete practices that respond structurally to socio-ecological issues.

Since 2023, he has been working at As Bean as a chef, and is also part of the strategy team. In a nutshell, the aim of the association is to change food systems, in particular through a 100% organic, home-cooked, seasonal catering model that supports small- and medium-scale local agriculture, while keeping prices affordable for consumers.

Ine Renson

Ine Renson is foreign affairs chief and deputy editor-in-chief of De Standaard newspaper.

Stefanie Parisius-Sewotaroeno

Stefanie Parisius-Sewotaroeno (born 1993) is a Surinamese writer of Javanese descent who mainly writes poetry. She grew up in De Hulp, Commewijne and draws inspiration from culture, nature and social issues. In 2016, she won the Write Now! Audience Award, in 2022 she was a participant of Vrystaat Kunstefees in South Africa and in 2023 one of her poems was in the hall exhibition ‘Famiri Familie’ of the City Archive of Amsterdam and the National Archive of Suriname. Stefanie is currently working on her debut.

Danae Theodoridou

Danae Theodoridou (www.danaetheodoridou.com) is a performance maker and researcher based in Brussels. She completed her practice-led PhD in Roehampton University in London (2013). Her artistic research focuses on social imaginaries, the practice of democracy and the way that art contributes to the emergence of socio-political alternatives. She teaches in the MA Performing Public Space in Fontys Academy of the Arts (NL), curates practice-led research projects, and presents and publishes her work internationally. She is the co-author of The Practice of Dramaturgy: Working on Actions in Performance (Valiz, 2017) and the author of Publicing – Practising Democracy Through Performance (Nissos, 2022).

photo: (c) Pauline Arnould

Fairouz Gazdallah

Fairouz Gazdallah is a policy advisor on food justice at Oxfam. In her research and policy work, she focuses mainly on uncovering the links between food systems, gender, migration and international solidarity. From a human rights perspective, she advocates for agroecology and food sovereignty at different political levels. She strongly believes in the power of diaspora communities to bring about political and social change.

Eveline Van Rijswijk

Eveline Van Rijswijk (born 1988) is a presenter, chairperson, theatre maker, columnist, speaker, science communicator & political historian. She studied political science, history and philosophy at Leiden University. She was editor-in-chief and presenter at the online & TV programme Universiteit van Nederland and also presented Focus, NTR’s history and science radio programme on NPO Radio 1. In autumn 2018, Eveline made her debut with the political one-woman show ‘De Première’, about 100 years of women in Dutch politics and the question of why the Netherlands has not had a female prime minister. Since autumn 2021, she has had a language column on NPO Radio1 at the programme ‘Spraakmakers’.

Hans van Scharen

Hans van Scharen, born in Brussels, studied Journalism in The Netherlands and worked as a journalist for newspapers, magazines and television in both Belgium and the Netherlands for over 15 years. For a decade (2009-2019) he worked as parliamentary advisor to Belgian MEP Bart Staes in the European parliament, focusing a lot on agricultural and food policy related issues like pesticides, food waste, fisheries, seeds and trade as well as tobacco, governance and EU budgetary (control) policy. Since the start of 2020 he works as researcher and campaigner for the Brussels based lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) and works as freelance journalist from time to time.

Tess Okolie

Tess Okolie is a passionate environmental activist focused on grassroots advocacy and protecting the welfare of young and vulnerable populations. She holds a bachelor’s in Microbiology from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Nigeria, and two master’s degrees – one in Environmental Health from the University of the West of England, and another in Biology (Biodiversity, Conservation and Restoration) from the University of Antwerp. She has expertise in conservation, environmental, gender and health policies. Tess enjoys dancing, cooking, engaging in conversations and traveling independently.

Jorrit Smit

Jorrit Smit combines his background in physical chemistry and science and technology studies to explore how socio-technic futures shape scientific research – and vice versa. He is currently focused on the politics of technofixes like ‘clean’ hydrogen, carbon capture and green fertilizer. Using an interdisciplinary approach, he critically analyzes the relationships between public research and (fossil) industries as well as the political limits embedded in feasibility and sustainability assessments of emerging technologies. As part of his research, Jorrit collaborates with Naïmé Perrette on a film essay about an unexpected energy source: ‘natural’ hydrogen.

Chloé Mikolajczak

Chloé Mikolajczak is an environmental & social justice activist & organiser based in Belgium. She has worked in European environmental NGOs on topics related to the fossil fuel industry’s influence on politics and waste. She has also been the spokesperson for Code Rouge, the largest civil disobedience movement in Belgium and has co-created and been involved in several citizen collectives on topics ranging from EACOP to deep sea mining and post-growth.

Merlijn De Rijcke

Merlijn De Rijcke is the secretary of the Brussels Capital Region’s permanent Citizens’ Assembly on Climate. He performs this function within Brussels Environment, the regional administration responsible for the environment and energy. A body launched by the Brussels Government in 2022. The aim of this body is to bring the voice of Brussels residents to the fore when developing Brussels’ climate management. To explain what a Citizens‘ Climate Assembly is, how it works and why the participation of all residents is important, an interactive game was developed for everyone to discover what a Citizens’ Climate Assembly is and how it works. The game has also been adapted to do it with young people or an audience that does not speak Dutch or French well.

Anna Rispoli

Anna Rispoli works on the border between artistic creation and public space and often does so with and from groups: teenagers and schoolchildren, activist groups, organisations working on redistribution, basic income, and so on. She is guided by what she observes: from social anxiety to the link between eroticism and politics, or …big differences in assembly techniques. Her project With love not for love also recently had a public moment at MolenFest: a catwalk of domestic workers.

Dirk Holemans

Dirk Holemans is coordinator of the think tank Oikos and editor-in-chief of the journal of the same name. He is former co-chair of the Green European Foundation, conducts research on commons and teaches on transition and system change. Dirk fuels public debate with opinions and essays on ecological issues.