Michiel is a journalist, researcher and actor from Ghent, Belgium, and is currently based in London, where he is completing a European joint master’s degree in Human Rights Policy and Practice. Being equally passionate about arts and social justice, Michiel joined Justice in Motion as a research collaborator in 2023. His work is primarily focused on evaluating and enhancing the impact of the company’s performances, partly in view of the ‘10-years in Motion’ exhibition.
Starting out as a freelance correspondent for different news media in Belgium, Michiel went on to work as a research and communications assistant at the UN Refugee Agency, the European Network of National Human Rights Institutions (ENNHRI) and the European Parliament. Before joining Justice in Motion, he was a project management and stakeholder relations consultant at Prospex Institute in Brussels, Gothenburg and Bilbao. Michiel holds a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and a master’s degree in EU Studies. In 2017, he was offered to participate in a summer school at the Sichuan University in Chengdu, China. Michiel is fluent in English, Dutch and French.
His passion for languages, storytelling and performing arts emerged in 2011 when participating in Amifran, a youth festival for French theatre in Arad, Romania. Back home, in 2018, he completed a 2-year improv acting course at Compagnie Amai and joined the company as a freelance performer for several years. He took on various acting roles as a member of the Ghent-based theatre house C&C and co-founded the Brussels-based theatre collective De Andies in 2022. Most recently, he trained and performed at the Gothenburg English Studio Theatre in Sweden and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in the UK.