Dr. Carolijn Terwindt is a lawyer, cultural anthropologist, author, and artistic explorer who joined the Embassy of the North Sea in 2021 to investigate the possibility of creating a European network for self-representation of waters to strengthen the cultural transformation towards a real participation of nonhumans in politics.
Previously from 2012 to 2019 she was involved in worker’s rights struggles in the textile industry and agribusiness as Senior Legal Advisor with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. Her last book „When Protest Becomes Crime. Politics and Law in Liberal Democracies“ was published in 2019 with Pluto Press. With the Peng! collective, an internationally renowned politically subversive art collective, in 2020 and 2021 she coordinated and performed in actions exhibiting in Hamburg and Berlin.
Apart from her assignment with the Embassy, she currently works with the Clean Clothes Campaign and is a member of the Comité 50 Jaar Ruigoord to put a more ecological and community-oriented way of living into practice. In her own artistic practice, Carolijn writes poetry, paints and plays violin, enjoying improvisation and jamming across different musical genres. An audio storytelling piece „Crying with Strangers“ was exhibited in 2021 at the SchoK festival in Schoorl, Netherlands. Her short film „Free Pass“ was shown at the Cinema Verde Environmental Film Festival in February 2022.