I was born in 1959 in The Hague, just in time to be aware of the social and political changes that started at the end of the sixties and shaped contemporary Europe and the world we are living in. These stimulating circumstances developed my interest in journalism and both national and international political, economical and social affairs. I was trained as an economist. In 1980 I received a bachelor’s degree from Erasmus University in Rotterdam and I finished my Masters degree in 1984 in Economic Science at the University of Amsterdam with a specialisation in industrial economics.
After a year as a researcher at the Economics Department of the University of Amsterdam, in 1985, I joined the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad as a financial and economical journalist. I published articles on international economics, tax policy, the stock exchange and international financial fraud. In 1993, I went to Madrid to become the paper’s correspondent in Spain, Portugal and Morocco. Since then I have worked for NRC and more recently De Volkskrant, the Dutch weekly Elsevier and several national radio and television channels in the Netherlands and Belgium, such as VPRO, NOS and VRT.
As an author I published two non-fiction books on Spain and Marocco (Spanje achter de Schermen, 2008 and Marokko achter de Schermen, 2005). My latest book “Reuzentonijn” (Giant Tuna, 2009) looks at the history of the Atlantic blue fin tuna and it’s current near extinction caused by the sushi industry. I published several investigative reports on the consequences of the Arab Spring.
In 2011, I joined the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication as a lecturer for the Workshop Journalism of the Master’s program in Media & Journalism.
|
