August 29th, 2025

Harry Wels calls himself a ‘multispecies organizational ethnographer’ and is Associate Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the African Studies Centre Leiden at Leiden University and Extra Ordinary professor at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa at the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies. He has this idea that there is no time to waste to keep on studying and reflecting on our multispecies entanglements and share and discuss his thoughts about this with students and colleagues. Many of his reflections are about learning what to unlearn in terms of assumptions, biases, prejudices, convictions, reflexes, impulses, beliefs, habits, lifestyles, manhood, relations, morality, ideas about right and wrong, and what not.

Saskia Stehouwer (Alkmaar, the Netherlands, 1975) studied Dutch and English literature at the University of Amsterdam. Saskia’s first volume of poetry, entitled wachtkamers (waiting rooms) was published by Marmer Publishers in October 2014 and received the prestigious C. Buddingh’-prize for poetry in 2015. Her second book, vrije uitloop (free range) was published in October 2016. In 2019, Saskia published the compostable poetry book bindweefsel (connective tissue) which was handwritten on homemade paper from kitchen scraps and plants. The book can be thrown on the compost heap after reading so that it can return to the cycle of nature. A translation of the book is underway.  Saskia is one of the founders and core members of the Klimaatdichters (Climate poets), a collective of over 250 Dutch and Flemish poets who use their words to raise awareness around climate issues. Her most recent book of poetry is called wonen op de rand van het wonder (living on the edge of the miracle, Marmer 2023).