Speakers 30 january 2016
Guy Standing is Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences, Professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. From August 2006 until January 2013, he was Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath in the UK. Between April 2006 and February 2009, he was also Professor of Labour Economics at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. From 1999 until March 2006, he was Director of the Socio‐Economic Security Programme of the International Labour Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1998‐99, he was in the “transition team” set up by the ILO’s new Director‐General to help restructure the organisation. He was previously Director of the ILO’s Labour Market Policies Branch, and before that Director of the ILO’s Central and Eastern European Team, based in the Hungarian capital, Budapest. Budapest. He is a founder member and honorary co‐president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), an international non‐governmental organisation that promotes basic income, whose members include economists, philosophers and other social scientists from over 50 countries. He has a doctorate in economics from the University of Cambridge and a master’s degree in industrial relations from the University of Illinois.
Philippe Van Parijs studied philosophy, law, political economy, sociology and Linguistics at the University Faculty Saint-Louis (Brussels) and the universities of Louvain, Oxford, Bielefeld and California (Berkeley). He holds doctorates in the social sciences (Louvain, 1977) and in philosophy (Oxford, 1980). He is a professor at the Faculty of economic, social and political sciences of the University of Louvain (UCL), where he founded in 1991 the Hoover Chair of economic and social ethics. Since 2006 he is a particular visiting professor at the Institute of philosophy of the Catholic University of Leuven, and he is member of Nuffield College (Oxford). From 2004 to 2010 he was Regular Visiting Professor of philosophy at Harvard University. He is one of the founders of the Basic Income European Network (BIEN), which in 2004 was renamed to Basic Income Earth Network and where he is the Chairman of the International Board. He is Chairman of the Steering Committee of the program of poverty and social justice from the King Baudouin Foundation. He is a member of the British Academy and of the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences, letters and fine arts and the European Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2001, he was awarded the Francqui Prize, the most prestigious scientific award of Belgium. In 2011, he received the Ark Prize for free speech. In 2007, a stamp dedicated to him as part of a series (“This is Belgium”) with nine outstanding Belgian scientists.
Enno Schmidt is a painter of art, writer and filmmaker. Born in 1958 in Osnabrück, he studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, lives and works in Basel. Since 2006, he is promoting the idea of an Unconditional Basic Income. Together with the Swiss entrepreneur Daniel Häni (* 1966), he founded the initiative for Basic Income in Switzerland. Together with others, in 2012 he launched the Citizens Initiative for a Basic Income, which could successfully be submitted in the autumn of 2013 with 126.000 signatures. In autumn 2016, it comes therefore to a referendum on the introduction of an Unconditional Basic Income in Switzerland. This is the most concrete and most far reaching form of a political implementation of an real Unconditional Basic Income for everyone in a height that is good to live. Enno Schmidt is of the opinion that the Unconditional Basic Income is not money for the poor, not money from the rich, not based on established preferences or any circumstances, but related to people. And everything else emanates from there. Enno Schmidt is author of the film “Basic income – a cultural impulse” and other films dedicated to the unconditional Basic Income.
Due to the earlier referendum in Zwitserland on 5 june 2016 in stead of autumn, Enno is not able to come to Maastricht. We have found another speaker about Basic Income Experiments in France
Nicole Teke is International Coordinator of the French Movement for a Basic Income. Born in Chile, she grew up in France, where she graduated from a Masters degree in Economic and Social Development, specializing in Crisis Management, at Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne University. Additionally, she has a License degree in Translation and Intercultural Communication. Having a strong interest in humanitarian, human – and especially women’s – rights and alter-globalist issues, she is also an active member of the Human Rights association, France Amérique Latine.
Sjir Hoeijmakers is a 25 year old econometrician, who got his masters cum laude at Tilburg University in 2014. After getting acquainted with the idea of a basic income during the European Citizens Initiative of 2013 he started doing research into the subject and became a member of the Vereniging Basisinkomen. He has since successfully put forward a motion for basic income experiments at the national congress of Dutch social liberal party D66, has been speaking and giving lectures throughout the Netherlands and is involved in preparation efforts for experimenting with elements of a basic income at the municipal level. He follows up with all interested municipalities, advises them, and tries to create synergies between them on a civil, governmental, political and academic level. Hoeijmakers crowdfunded his own ‘basic income’ so he could afford to dedicate himself to the support and coordination of pilot project initiatives in the Netherlands.
Otto Lehto is president of BIEN Finland. He was born in 1984 in Southern Finland. He is a philosopher, scientist and public intellectual with broad interests. His special interests include languages, linguistics and semiotics, Anglo-American political philosophy (especially anarchism, libertarianism and classical liberalism). He has special skills in the following non-academic fields: music and composition, blogging and journalism, political action. He is member of the “Greens” in Finland. He maintains an online talk show
Markus Kanerva is Managing Director tänk (an independent Finnish think tank) and actively participates in research activities. Before founding tank, he gathered ten years of professional experience in communications, marketing and business development both in Finland and Sweden while providing strategic advice to Nordic and multinational blue-chip companies. He has always written an active role in civil society organizations focused on health and wellness and a variety of topics as a freelance journalist for quality business newspapers in Finland. Mark graduated with a Master’s degree in economics from the University of Helsinki and has also obtained an academic certification in entrepreneurship at the Helsinki School of Economics. Markus intellectual interests focus on the processes of decision-making; dynamics between individuals and the societies they inhabit and the measurement and increase the relative prosperity. Markus took the initiative to found tank, because he is convinced that an independent expert think tank that can compete with the highest international standards can support the Finnish policy-making and public debate by offering modern insights.
Bonno Pel (1974) is a postdoctoral researcher at Univiversite Libre de Bruxelles in system innovations and transitions, with a particular interest in the role of social innovation in the processes of social transformation. Graduated in the planning and political philosophy at the University of Amsterdam (NL), he graduated system innovation in 2012 at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (NL). He is a generalist with special interest in examining current processes. Foremost among these are for him today persistent sustainability problems, and related governance challenges. He is a well known Dutch chess player.
Julia Backhaus The questions how societal change can be understood, who or what is driving it and the question how shared assumptions and ideas can provide fertile ground for large-scale change have for a long time formed part of Julia’s personal and academic musings. This year, she will finalise her PhD research at ICIS, Maastricht University, addresing these questions in relation to social practices and transformative social innovation.
In her earlier work at ECN (Energy research Centre of the Netherlands), one of the leading knowledge institutes on renewable energy technologies, energy policies, market mechanisms and social changes accompanying transitions to a low-carbon future, she appreciated connceting with like-minded people’s “assumptions about change” while participating in research projects on the implementation of new technologies (e.g. smart grids, hydrogen and electric vehicles), demand-side management, behaviour change and sustainable lifestyles.
Julia holds an interdisciplinary BSc and an MPhil in Science and Technology Studies, both from Maastricht University.
Speakers 31 january 2016
All speakers have a Masters in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability from the Blekinge Institute of Technology (Karlskrona, Sweden) and they have a common interest in the power of stories and values as a way to frame societal change- and development processes.
Erica Scott also has a Bachelor in Public Health Science towards Community Planning (Karlskrona, 2013). She is deeply committed to being a catalyst for systems change in local communities around the Baltic transitioning towards a sustainable Baltic Sea Region.
Sérgio Alvès has a Masters in Entrepreneurship (Umeå, 2011) and a Bachelor in Business Administration (Lisbon, 2008). He is passionate about sustainable innovations as a way to transform local economies as well as the way language affects change.
Wiebke Fercho is currently finishing a Master in Sustainability Economics and Management at the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg (Germany). Moreover she has a Bachelor in Business Administration . Wiebke has a great interest in new strategies and approaches for viable, long-term economic activity – for an economy which enables a good life and preserves natural resources.
Barb Jacobson will be the moderator on 30 January. She is co-ordinator of Basic Income UK, trustee of the Citizens Income Trust (UK) and Chair of Unconditional Basic Income Europe (UBIE) since it started in February 2014. She currently also works as a welfare rights advisor and community organiser in central London. Previous to becoming involved with basic income she organised around women’s, welfare, housing and health rights for over 30 years at local and national levels.