Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands
Eva Rovers is a non-fiction writer and the founding director of Bureau Burgerberaad. She is an expert on democratic renewal and regularly performs in the media, at conferences as well as at festivals such as Lowlands and Brainwash. In 2022 she published the best selling book ‘Nu is het aan ons’ (‘Now it's up to us’), in which she argues why citizens should not to leave politics exclusively to politicians. Through sortition based citizens assemblies, citizens themselves could - and should - play a vital role in decision making regarding the most complex issues of our time. After having published two biographies, Eva decided to dedicate her writing to ways citizens can empower themselves and bring about societal change. She has become a leading advocate for citizens' assemblies, and co-founded Bureau Burgerberaad, a non-profit organisation championing assemblies in The Netherlands. She has coordinated an international collective learning project on European climate assemblies at Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam, called "Climate Citizens’ Assemblies: Learning with, from and for Europe". The project brought together academics, activists, policymakers and everyday citizens from all over Europe, to share their experience and knowledge of how to organise inclusive and effective climate assemblies. The conclusions can be found at: www.cca-project.org. Eva is also the author of the critically acclaimed biographies of writer Boudewijn Büch and art collector Helene Kröller-Müller, and winner of the National Biography Award in The Netherlands. She is a cultural historian with a PhD from the University of Groningen. She taught at the University of Utrecht and Groningen, and was a member of the Supervisory Board of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam between 2014 and 2022. Over the years Eva has given over 500 lectures on cultural history, societal change, civil movements, climate action and deliberative democracy. She lives both in Amsterdam and Brussels.
Author of two critically acclaimed biographies and several books on civil resistance and democratic renewal. Speaker on cultural history, societal change, civil movements, climate action, deliberative democracy, and citizens' assemblies. Read my article: 'Democracy is in decline: here is how we can revive it', on The Correspondent. Books: - Author, Nu Is Het Aan Ons. Oproep tot echte democratie (Now it’s Up To Us. A call for true democracy), De Correspondent 2023. - Editor and co-author, Nu Het Nog Kan (The Time that’s Left, edited volume on mass extinction and global warming, contributions from thirty activists, scientists, philosophers and journalists), Extinction Rebellion / De Bezige Bij, 2020. - Author, De rebelse held (The Rebel Hero, letters on climate change to Richard Buckminster Fuller), Prometheus, 2019. - Author, Practivisme. Een handboek voor heimelijke rebellen (Practivism: A Manual for Discrete Rebels), Prometheus 2018. - Author, Ik kom in opstand, dus wij zijn (I revolt, therefore we are, essay on Albert Camus’ call for collective action in times of social media and clicktivism), Ambo Anthos, 2017. - Author, Sammeln für die Ewigkeit. Helene Kröller-Müller: die bedeutendste van Gogh-Sammlerin der Welt, translated by Marlene Müller-Haas, Athena Verlag, 2016. - Author, BOUD. Het verzameld leven van Boudewijn Büch, (biography of a controversial landmark figure in Dutch literature and popular culture), Prometheus, 2016. - Author, De eeuwigheid verzameld. Helene Kröller-Müller: 1869-1939, (biography of the woman who became the most important Van Gogh collector in the world), Bert Bakker, 2010. Awarded both the Jan van Gelderprijs 2011 and the Hazelhoff Biografieprijs 2012.
Bureau Burgerberaad is a young, independent, non-profit organisation, which has rapidly put citizens' councils on the map. Our mission is a future-proof, inclusive democracy, where politicians and residents decide and work together on the biggest problems of our time. Our main activities are: - Sharing information on the conditions of successful citizens's assemblies with politicians and civil servants. - Increase 'democratic self confidence' among citizens by letting them experience what real democracy is. For more information visit: https://bureauburgerberaad.nl
Since the start in 1983, the Van der Leeuw Lecture has become an important cultural event in the Netherlands, attended by over 1.200 people from all walks of life. The goal of the lecture is to bring people together through a story, be it through a philosophical or personal reflection on life or through a more political reflection on society. The Van der Leeuw Lecture is organized by the University of Groningen, the local and provincial authorities and de Volkskrant, a leading newspaper in the Netherlands. Professor Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950), whose name was given to both the series and the Foundation, was an eminent Dutch scholar, specialized in the fields of anthropology and culture. The annual lecture is held in the medieval church of Saint Martin’s in Groningen. Speakers who previously delivered the Van der Leeuw Lecture include Barbara W. Tuchman, Leszek Kolakowski, Peter Gay, Iris Murdoch, Amos Oz, Ralf Dahrendorf, Simon Schama, György Konrád, Eduardo Galeano, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Ian Buruma, André Brink, Carlos Fuentes, Ismail Kadare, Ben Okri, Jonathan I. Israel, Annie Proulx, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Isabel Allende, Ian McEwan, Tom Lanoye, Noreena Hertz, Amitav Ghosh, Antjie Krog, Seymour Hersh, Karen Armstrong, Alain de Botton, Ilija Trojanow, Joshua Foer, Philipp Blom, Russell Shorto, Guy Verhofstadt, Tomas Sedlacek, David van Reybrouck and Hilary Mantel.
Consulting the City of Amsterdam on the design of its first citizens’ assembly, which focuses on the question what measures the city should implement to reach its climate target of 55% reduction in 2030.