Jan van Boeckel is a Dutch artist-educator and researcher. He was professor art & sustainability from 2020 until the end of 2024 at the Research Centre Art & Society of Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen. Currently he is a Senior Research Associate at the Research Centre. From 2018 to 2019, Jan was senior lecturer in visual art education at the Academy of Design and Crafts of Gothenburg University and guest educator and researcher at CEMUS, the Centre for Environment and Development Studies in Uppsala, Sweden. Between 2015 and 2018, he was professor in art education at the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn. Jan van Boeckel has also been program director in design theory at the Iceland University of the Arts in Reykjavik (2014-2015). In 2019, he started teaching painting courses at MK Ateliers in Amsterdam. Jan has regularly taught and facilitated courses at places like Schumacher College in Dartington, the UK; at University College of Southeast Norway; and at CEMUS in Sweden.

Together with others, Jan established the international research group on arts-based environmental education at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Helsinki. In 2013, he presented his doctoral thesis, At the Heart of Art and Earth: An Exploration of Practices in Arts-Based Environmental Education (4^th print, Dec. 2022).  In 2016, Van Boeckel was a member of the British Educational Research Association’s commission that focused onthe potential and challenges of developing STEAM education through creative pedagogies. From 2014 onward, Jan is member of the research group on art & science in education at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Ås. Since 2007, he is part of the international eco-art network, and more recently, of the Consortium of Environmental Philosophers. He regularly performs peer-reviews of article submissions, such as for the journal of Environmental Education Research.

In 1989, Jan van Boeckel obtained his Master’s degree in Social Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, with the thesis De Onthulling van het Sacrale: Inheemse Volken en de Media (‘Revealing the sacred: Indigenous peoples and the media’). The world-views and environmental philosophies of indigenous peoples have remained a lasting field of interest. Together with film-making group ReRun Productions, Jan produced a series of documentaries on this theme, as well as films on philosophers such as Jacques Ellul and Arne Naess, who take a critical stance to our modern techno-industrial societies. These films include, among others: The Earth is Crying (1987), It’s Killing the Clouds (1992), The Betrayal by Technology (1992), and The Call of the Mountain (1997).

In the early 2000s, Jan lived with his family in Hällefors, deep in the forests of central Sweden, where he was an art teacher for both children and adults, and consultant on international cultural projects. Here he conceptualized the international art project Cloudberry Dreams, on the cultural interpretation of wetlands. From 2004 to 2006, Jan was head of communications at the Netherlands Centre for Indigenous Peoples in Amsterdam.

On basis of his inspiration by indigenous cultures, his own engagement in art-making and teaching, and the experience of living close to wilderness in Sweden, Jan’s interest has moved to art as a mode to connect with what David Abram aptly called ‘the more-than-human-world.’ One of his research interests is the tension between trying to open the senses whilst coping with the enormity of the current ecological crisis – an issue all the more pressing when practising arts-based environmental education with young people.

Jan van Boeckel was content editor for the Open Air Philosophy project where selections of writings by (and about) Norwegian ecophilosophers Arne Naess, Sigmund Kvaløy Setreng, and Peter Wessel Zapffe are made available to an international audience. Here is a podcast interview with him, at the occasion of the launch of the OAP website in 2020.

In 2017, Jan was the guest editor-in-chief for Arts and Teaching Journal Artizein. The theme of this special edition was the triad of art, education, and the natural environment. At the time, Jan regularly participated in sessions on artistic research of the ArtEZ International Research school (AIR) in Arnhem, the Netherlands.

For eight times since 2016, Jan has taught a three day intensive course in the autumn in Lahemaa National Park, Estonia, on the theme of art and sustainability education. Participants are students of the Estonian Academy of Arts, Erasmus exchange students, and interested teachers. The next three day intensive in Estonia will take place in October 2026. In May 2025, Jan was a teacher as part of a 3-day masterclass entitled Toward Resilience and Regeneration at the invitation of renowned Dutch artist Claudy Jongstra at Waltham Place Farm in the UK.

In 2019, Jan was interviewed by Anneli Porri of the Estonian Academy of Arts for the cultural magazine SIRP (here is a link to the transcript in English). An earlier interview by Solveig Jahnke with Jan from 2015 can be accessed here (or at the website of the Estonian Academy of Arts). Two interviews (in Dutch) – one in the daily newspaper Trouw (2013) and the other as part of the book Hoor de Zon (2012) – can be accessed here.