Coordinators
Hi everyone, my name is Eleni (she/her), and this is my first year as a coordinator at OtherWise. I have also been involved as a board member of OtherWise for the past two years. I am really excited and grateful to explore my new role in the coming year. I am studying Food Technology and currently exploring food not as a market commodity but as a human right and how we can build resilient and socially just food systems, especially in urban environments. I also see food as an educational tool, a source of play, and a way to activate our senses. In my everyday life, I love taking care of my microbiome, my plants, and my people. I also like to play, dance, cook, do crafts, take pictures, forage, and learn. I love learning!!!
I have previously spent some summers volunteering in off-grid eco-villages in my home country, Greece, and abroad, discovering how valuable and necessary communal living, communal healing, and collective care are. With my work at Otherwise, I am excited to contribute to this safe space with artistic collective activities that explore feelings and aspects of mental health, self-love, and our relationship with the non-human life of this planet.
Hi! I’m Isa (she/they) - an anthropologist, educator, and community organiser. I’m excited to join the OtherWise team as a Coordinator. Over the past few years, I’ve moved between classrooms, community centers, forests, and museums, always asking the question: how can we learn differently, together? I love to explore the ways we can breathe life into a more just world, whether arm in arm in protest, or showing love over a delicious meal. I am interested in creating social spaces where people can critically engage with themselves and the world around them, and find communities to disrupt, decolonise, and build resilient movements for change.
Interns
Hi, my name is Lise (she/her). I'm part of the Otherwise team, working as an intern and as the organizer of the course Queer Biology . I was drawn to Otherwise because of its incentive to creating spaces of shared knowledge, artistic expression, and alternative teaching methods. What could be more exciting than weaving together sewing and anarchism, or baking and decoloniality?
My interests lie in challenging binary, heteronormative, and patriarchal frameworks in biology. I am curious in more-than-human kin and their teachings, and how we can celebrate the fluidity of sex, relationships, and the queerness of nature itself.
Apart from biology, I am excited about body healing, feminisms, and all kinds of craft-making—while always nurturing my ever-growing love for baking.
Mathéa(26yo)(they/them)is a former medical student from France who converted in political ecology. Currently, she works on the ethics of outer space commercialisation in the Qualitative Research Method department of Radboud University.
Since September 2025, she is intern at Otherwise, where she sets up the course Critical Alternative Research Methods, an updated version of the famous AMR training, with a focus on the roles and influences of hidden power unbalances in perpetuating epistemic injustices.
She also work as freelance investigation journalist, (un)covering the origins and impacts of green colonialism in West Africa and West Balkans.
She is co-chair of Rethinking Economics Nijmegen and involved in various animal rights advocacy organisations.
She is passionated about birds, playing drums, and the struggle against disinformation and epistemic manipulations.
Board Members
Heyo! My name is Merel (she/her) and I have joined Otherwise in September 2025 as a board member. After following the Resistance, Power & Movements course last year I’ve became very enthusiastic about all the different events that Otherwise organizes. Within my studies and personal life I am interested in human behavior, social dynamics and interpersonal relations. Active listening and open spaces for conversations and forming deep connections are very important to me and I would like to contribute to create these moments and spaces as a member of Otherwise. I feel mostly passionate about the focus on community building and how this can be the basis of acts of resistance. I am excited to create connection and community together through creative activities like crafting, theater, music and playing in nature.
Hi, my name is Ina! I believe academic knowledge is a highly political topic. I am determined to rethink educational methods, especially in regards to people’s place within the natural and more-than-human world. I believe academia needs to rethink how and why we learn – but also who gets to learn and whose knowledge is deemed legitimate. Therefore, my interests are challenging dominant narratives posed by Western science and technology as ‘absolute truths’. I strive to find new methods to incorporate alternative knowledges in an ethical, decolonial and intersectional manner. I am particularly interested in how this knowledge can be used to reconcile and resurge indigenous epistemologies and ontologies. I am excited to be part of the Otherwise board this year to begin my quest to find new ways of ‘knowing’ and ‘being’ by creating an inclusive learning atmosphere. I look forward to meeting many interesting people on this endeavour! See you around.
Heyo, I'm Pragya (they/she). I discovered OtherWise through the course Resistance, Power and Movements and am excited to join as a board member this year. Here are some facts about me :) As an erstwhile big city girl, moving to Wageningen last year has been a transformative experience. I am actively trying to find and create space for rest and love in the world around me. At any given moment, you can find me thinking about how to reconcile being a student of science at WUR with trying to live the anti-colonial world I envision.
I'm Yuma (they/she) - I identify as they because I acknowledge that I am an ecosystem, full of microbiomes, inside and out, that keep me alive and well. And that each of us, is composed of microbiomes and connected together, like organs of our living planet.
I grew up in South Africa, where I learnt about Ubuntu, and the exclicatory Nguni saying "Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu" / "A human being is who they are because of other human beings". This inspires the work that I am passionate about: reconnecting us to each other in community and in communion with nature, for this is the invisible thread that binds and sustains us.
I studied biobased sciences at WUR, and explored many diverse tracks that led me to this Yuma I am today: from African Philosophy, Biomimetics, Ethnobotany, Environmental technology, Mycology, Ecological Design and Permaculture, Education and Learning Sciences. Now I am a heartful visionary futurist, weaving the webs of abundance into tangible connections and stories. I work at Learn Biomimicry as a Biomimicry Educator. Here I mentor working professionals to create regenerative design solutions inspired by nature, attuned to their corners of the world.
This is my first year on the board of Otherwise - I'm very excited to collaborate and connect with you and bring incredible facilitators that help us return to right relationship with ourselves, our communities and the more-than human world.
Pike started out as an intern and has been the treasurer of OtherWise since 2022. After finishing their master's and returning to their home country, they now manage the finances of OtherWise from afar. Why Pike is still doing this remains obscure but rumor has it that they struggle to cut their ties to Wageningen and need a reason to return to the city at least once a year.
Hi, I'm Ian (he/they). I’ve been working with OtherWise for the past two years. I started with my internship and I was hooked from the very beginning. Meeting others in the team, learning about the cool projects they are working on, and getting resources and support to organise my own events! It's really a privilege. I had previous experience organising with no budget and this is a game changer.
After my internship I have continued organising events on topics ranging from anarchist organising under repressive regimes to critiques of academia. I love inviting people to Wageningen that I have met at events and workshops elsewhere to share their knowledge in our cosy little town. In my free time I like to play music, boulder, read about revolution, and anything else that isn’t looking at a screen.
Hi : ) I’m Bente (she/her). From the moment I got to know about Otherwise, I’ve been very excited about all the cool events they organize. What inspired me to become a board member this year is the possibility of putting topics like decoloniality, anti-capitalism, community building, and care into practice through events and workshops, and to learn, reflect and work on these together. The warm and caring people I met during Otherwise events last year also inspired me and gave me hope that it is possible to live in a world that’s more connected and just, in which we feel more empowered, and resist together. I’m excited to organize many more events and workshops this year and would love to meet you there! : )
