wildingwith
Philosophy

From studying nature to experiencing it

The founder of wildingwith beside a mountain lake

I have always been curious about how we relate to the living world around us. Born in the wide open landscapes of the Netherlands' ‘Green Heart’, I spent my childhood exploring the life of the animals and plants around me. Then, I moved to the city of Utrecht, where I studied urban planning and biodiversity while working in my garden, at university and at the municipality on ecology policy. I kept coming back to the same question: how can we feel more connected to the nature we are already part of?

Through my research and field experiences, I learned that awareness is the key. Noticing the life around us with the whole body is an opening for connectedness. Walking slowly. Listening. Getting curious. Noticing the small things we usually pass by. And creating these experiences is exactly what wildingwith wants to facilitate.

Further reading

Library

Literature that has inspired the thinking and practice behind wildingwith.

  1. 01

    Urban Natures: Living the More-than-Human City, ed. by Ferne Edwards, Lucia Alexandra Popartan and Ida Nilstad Pettersen (Berghahn Books, 2023)

  2. 02

    Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Duke University Press, 2016)

  3. 03

    Donna J. Haraway, When Species Meet (University of Minnesota Press, 2008)

  4. 04

    Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Editions, 2013)

  5. 05

    Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. by Catherine Porter (Harvard University Press, 1993)

  6. 06

    Jamie Lorimer, Wildlife in the Anthropocene: Conservation after Nature (University of Minnesota Press, 2015)

  7. 07

    Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy (New World Library, 2012)

  8. 08

    María Puig de la Bellacasa, Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More-than-Human Worlds (University of Minnesota Press, 2017)

  9. 09

    Miles Richardson, Reconnection: Fixing our Broken Relationship with Nature (Pelagic Publishing, 2023)

  10. 10

    Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton University Press, 2015)