Extra information about our team members

Chris Kaspar de Ploeg is an investigative journalist, grassroots organizer, speaker, moderator and author of Ukraine in the Crossfire. He has worked with Platform Authentieke Journalistiek and De Groene Amsterdammer and his work has been published in various other media. Chris was a lead organizer in the historic student movement of 2015 that occupied the humanities faculty and the managerial headquarters of the University of Amsterdam for nearly two months, under the banners of De Nieuwe Universiteit and the University of Colour. After he graduated cum laude from Amsterdam University College, with a major in the social sciences, Chris went on to work as a cultural-societal programmer at Studio/K, where he has organized with dozens of grassroots groups to bring social justice events to the neighborhood of East Amsterdam. Chris has also been a member of the Market Theater since 2019, both as a researcher and performer, to bring social justice theater for free to various local markets in Amsterdam.

Pravini Baboeram is an artist and activist, creating art to contribute to social change. She has been engaged in community work, translating decolonial theory to grassroots initiatives that challenge institutional racism and colonial legacies. She is the co-founder of action committee Holi is not a Houseparty, a campaign against cultural appropriation of the Hindu spring festival Holi, and initiator of the Anti-racism Voting Guide. In addition, she led the crowdfunding campaign Tetary Must Rise, which led to the replacement of the statue of colonizer Barnet Lyon by the Hindustani warrior of resistance Janey Tetary. Pravini also set up Indian History Month to celebrate stories and contributions of people from the Indian diaspora. More recently, Pravini directed, wrote and produced the music documentary “The Uprising”, a film that offers a decolonial perspective on the resistance movement against racism in Europe. The film serves as an educational tool to engage people in decolonial theory and practice.

Max Arto de Ploeg is a community builder, grassroot organizer, moderator, musician, teacher, and public speaker. His expertise is in colonial history, neo-colonialism, climate and racism. As an organizer he was the founder and program coordinator of the Decolonial School in Amsterdam (2016 period March-June) in which he was one of the lead organizers of the University Colour student movement for decolonization (2015-2016 period). After and during the Maagdenhuis occupation (2015), he was involved in setting up the Diversity Committee at the University of Amsterdam, where he worked as a student assistant and coordinator for Gloria Wekker during the committee’s investigation(2016-2017). He was a cultural & social programmer at Studio / K (period 2017-2018). Currently, Max works as an event organizer for an Inclusive City at Pakhuis de Zwijger and is the projectleader of the yearly Week Against Racism and Together Against Racism coalition in Amsterdam. He has been involved in setting up countless events ranging from symposia, lectures, conferences , festivals, workshops, art evenings, network & community gatherings and demonstrations. Within Aralez he helped set-up and was project leader of Indigenous Liberation and Decolonial Learning Sessions. Rights now he is organising projects such as the Decolonial Activist Program, Rooting Resistance community gatherings and yearly conference on International Reperations. 

Chihiro Geuzebroek works to restore our relationship with earth and eachother. She does so in the capacity of film, decolonial climate justice activism, campaigning, public speaking and spoken word.  She is Director Producer of the feature film Radical Friends, former campaign manager of the political party BIJ1 and co-founder of Climate Liberation Bloc. In 2019 she worked for Greenpeace. She is currently screenwriting a speculative fiction script centering Indigenous futurism and personal, social and political healing from colonial erasure and (intergenerational) trauma.

Jeike Meijer is a half Dutch/ Arawak woman raised in California. She is a songwriter, musician and activist. She often combines her love of music and her activism by doing musical workshops and giving talks on Indigenous resistances to climate change. She has worked on Indigenous movements on turtle island, including on Chumash, Costanoan and Kanaka Maoli lands. 

Sherlien Sanches born in Surinam in 1979. She moved to Netherlands when she was about 1 year old where she was brought up. Her dad is creole from the Caribbean. And her mom is from the Native Karinya tribe that lives in the northern part of South America. Sanches works on Sustainable event management. And with her own business, A Touch of Spirit she organizes events for organizations who create a sustainable and social impact. She works for the Earth Charter since 2008 and is part of the Earth Charter team The Netherlands. Furthermore, she is involved with several programs concerning Indigenous projects and activities in The Netherlands and in Surinam.

Nadira Omarjee is a decolonial feminist scholar, working internationally. Previously, she was a Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute on the Africa Scholar Programme at Uppsala University, Sweden. She is currently a Research Fellow with the Identity, Diversity and Inclusion (IDI) Research Group in the Sociology Department at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her previous book dealt with questions on decolonising academia by following the decolonial student movements in Cape Town and Amsterdam: Reimagining the Dream: Decolonising Academia by Putting the Last First (2018). Her current research interest focuses on decolonial feminist pedagogies with her latest book: We belong to the Earth: towards a decolonial feminist inquiry rooted in uhuru and ubuntu. This book deals specifically with the ways in which ‘conscientisation’ can lead towards justice and healing. It attempts to connect the classroom to the community by inserting lived experiences against epistemicides: the personal is political. She has experimented with flipping the classroom using Freirian (1970) concepts of learning through sharing; connecting ontology with epistemology by bridging art, activism and scholarship.

Eduardo Cáceres Salgado born in Alkmaar  in 1983 to parents who came to The Netherlands as political refugees from the dictatorship in Chile. He studied regenerative agriculture and is founder of Mas Newen, a company that makes natural and plantbased cosmetics together with local and Indigenous farmers. He is also founder of the Kodkod Foundation that promotes regenerative farming and ecosystem restoration in Chile and in the Netherlands he is board-member and co-founder of the Amsterdamse Frisdrank Fabriek, a circulair and sustainable craft soda company.