POPULARITY
This week's guest, Andrea Leiter, is one of those polymaths who brings not just breadth, but astonishing depth to the work of bridging the worlds of technology, biodiversity and international law; bringing them together in service of a new way of being built from the ruins of collapse. Andrea works at the intersection of law, digital transformation, and economic innovation. Director of Amsterdam Center for International Law, she's deeply aware of, and involved in, Transnational Law, Digital Economies & Institutional Innovation, all things crypto - as well as being a Social Justice Entrepreneur. She holds a jointly awarded PhD in Law from the University of Melbourne and the University of Vienna, where her dissertation examined the historical foundations of international investment law and the legal architectures of global capital. Her resulting manuscript titled ‘Making the World Safe for Investment: The Protection of Foreign Property 1922-1959' was published with Cambridge University Press. She is a junior faculty member at the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School. As legal scholar and strategist, her expertise lies in transnational law, private ordering, the governance of digital economies, and the design of new institutional forms for just and sustainable futures. I came across her when she was a guest on the Blockchain Socialist podcast - one of my must-listens - and heard that she was co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of the Sovereign Nature Initiative (SNI), a venture which aimed to 'merge nature with digital ecosystems and introduce online communities to ecological stewardship whilst developing novel funding mechanisms for vital biodiversity protection and restoration'. you'll hear more about this in the conversation that follows, but I want to emphasise that the SNI team designed and implemented the Decentralised Ecological Economics Protocol (DEEP), which demonstrated how blockchain infrastructure can serve biodiversity goals. Over two years, SNI developed and distributed more than one million digital collectibles, activating new models of ecological value creation.Currently, Andrea leads a Dutch Research Council-funded VENI project on Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) and their potential to reshape economic governance from below. She also serves as Acting Director of Research at the Amsterdam Center for International Law, where she guides strategic research planning and foster interdisciplinary collaboration. She also co-developed and launched an Advanced LLM in Technology Governance with a public purpose orientation, an effort that included curriculum design, funding acquisition, and stakeholder engagement.One of Andrea's superpowers is the ability to take complex concepts and make them comprehensible to ordinary people: blockchain, cryptocurrency, the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum, the potential for technology to be used to heal as well as the many ways it is already being used to harm, so we spent the first half of our conversation exploring the baselines of where we are and what's happening in the world. I refer to Andrea's blog post, 'Who gets to bet on the future?' which first appeared on her Transformative Private Law Blog and is linked in the show notes. She mentioned several books and I've linked those in the show notes too, because they were new to me, and completely mind blowing. I found ExoCapitalism as a pdf where you decide what you pay - this is the value of small presses that actually get what their books are discussing - and Protocols for Post Capitalist Expression is open source - you can read it and engage in the process with others in the Economic Space Agency. Links Sovereign Nature Initiative https://sovereignnature.com/Andrea on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrea-leiter/Amsterdam Centre for Intenational Law https://acil.uva.nl/VENI project https://www.nwo.nl/en/researchprogrammes/nwo-talent-programme/projects-veniTransformative Private Law Blog "Who gets to bet on the future?" https://transformativeprivatelaw.com/who-gets-to-bet-on-the-future/Andrea on Blockchain Socialist Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-blockchain-socialist/id1501607045?i=1000660699306Between Gaia and Ground: Four Axioms of Existence and the Ancestral Catastrophe of Late Liberalism by Elizabeth A. Povinelli https://dukeupress.edu/between-gaia-and-groundExoCapitalism: Economies with Absolutely No Limits by Marek Poliks & Roberto Alonso Trillo https://goodpress.co.uk/products/exocapitalism-economies-with-absolutely-no-limits-by-marek-poliks-roberto-alonso-trilloPROTOCOLS FOR POST CAPITALIST EXPRESSION by Dick Bryan, Jorge López & Akseli Virtanen https://postcapitalist.agency/What we offer: Accidental Gods, Dreaming Awake and the Thrutopia Writing Masterclass If you'd like to join our next Open Gathering offered by our Accidental Gods Programme it's 'Dreaming Your Year Awake' (you don't have to be a member) on Sunday 4th January 2026 from 16:00 - 20:00 GMT - details are hereIf you'd like to join us at Accidental Gods, this is the membership where we endeavour to help you to connect fully with the living web of life. If you'd like to train more deeply in the contemporary shamanic work at Dreaming Awake, you'll find us here. If you'd like to explore the recordings from our last Thrutopia Writing Masterclass, the details are here
Check out John Behr's new translation of Gregory of Nyssa's On the Human Image of God.What does it mean to be human? We pay attention to our broken humanity more during Lent. And there's that phrase, when we make a mistake, "I'm only human!" True. But what about the glory and promise of being human? What kind of humanity we see in the pattern of Christ? How do we live now, if our destiny is to be, as the saints tell us, "raised with Christ" who is "seated at the right hand of God"?Today we'll talk with theologian John Behr about St. Gregory of Nyssa's work, On the Human Image of God, and John's new translation of it. We'll listen in as Gregory, like the theological rock star he is, takes a melody from Plato and riffs hard, but with a Christian anthropology, and creates nothing less than an anthem to God's saving work in Jesus.What is a human? How do humans have a special relationship with death? And how does the gospel, and especially John's gospel, peel back the curtain on what Jesus' humanity is doing for all creatures?The Rev. Dr. John Behr is Regius Professor of Humanity at the University of Aberdeen. He previously taught at St. Vladmir's Seminary, where he served as dean from 2007-17. John is also the Metropolitan Kallistos Chair of Orthodox Theology at the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam Center for Orthodox Theology. (Finally a quick shout-out: if you're interested in this question, What does it mean to be human?, then save the date, friends! The Living Church is hosting a conference this September 26-28 in Oklahoma City entitled The Human Pilgrimage: A Conference on How to Live. We've got a beautiful slate of speakers, including Katherine Sonderegger, Amy Peeler, Victor Austin, and Graham Tomlin. Watch any Living Church space for registration coming soon.)Now brush up on your Greek, because there will be a test on the Timaeus at the end of this. (Just kidding.) We hope you enjoy the conversation.
Dr Eliana Cusato, postdoctoral fellow at the Amsterdam Center for International Law, presents an overview of the key arguments in her book, 'The Ecology of War and Peace: Marginalising Slow and Structural Violence in International Law'.
Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits the restriction of rights for any other purpose than those for which they are prescribed. It aims to prevent the abuse of power by state authorities, or the restriction of rights for illegitimate purposes. In this episode, Prof. Başak Çalı and Dr Corina Heri join Daragh Murray to discuss the history of Article 18, the case law around it, and whether it can speak to the rule of law crisis unfolding in Europe today. Prof. Başak Çalı is Professor of International Law at the Hertie School and Director of the School's Centre for Fundamental Rights. Çalı is the Chair of European Implementation Network and a Fellow of the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex. She has acted as a Council of Europe expert on the European Convention on Human Rights since 2002. She received her PhD in International Law from the University of Essex in 2003. Dr Corina Heri is a researcher in international human rights law. She has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL) since 2017. Before that, she completed her PhD research at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in 2017.
In deze podcast gaat Robin in gesprek met ondernemer en sales expert Jochum Jarigsma. Jochum, UvA-economie, is spreker en trainer op het gebied van ondernemerschap, netwerken, acquisitie en sales en is internationaal actief als businesscoach en dagvoorzitter. Hij is oprichter van AccuRaad en de website Verkoopresultaat.nl die zich volledig richt op MKB-bedrijven en zelfstandige professionals. Daarnaast is hij verbonden aan het Amsterdam Center for Entrepreneurship (ACE), Yes!Delft, Utrecht Inc en verschillende hogescholen. Meer podcast's kunt u vinden op https://robinvanveen.com
Human Rights Consortium When Refugee Status Ends; Repatriation or Integration? Dr Maarten den Heijer (Amsterdam Center for International Law) Maarten den Heijer is assistant professor of international law at the Amsterdam Center for Internati...
Human Rights Consortium When Refugee Status Ends; Repatriation or Integration? Dr Maarten den Heijer (Amsterdam Center for International Law) Maarten den Heijer is assistant professor of international law at the Amsterdam Center for Internati...