Short history // curriculum vitae:

Lizan grew up in Friesland, the Netherlands. She subsequently studied law at the Utrecht Law College - with an exchange in Sydney, Australia in Islamic law and Refugee law - and attained her Public International and European Law degree (LLM) in Amsterdam. She was part of the National Think Tank on Education in 2015, and worked at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for 2,5 years. She worked in both The Hague and New York, advised on public policy for international cooperation (food security, stability, humanitarian aid and migration) — and was involved in a joint project on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with Kenya and Malawi.

In 2018 she left the Ministry to become a Fellow in Global Journalism at the University of Toronto — one of the lucky few (20) subject-matter experts who got the chance to write stories in their fields for American and Canadian news outlets. Lizan wrote for VICE, OpenCanada, Foreign Policy, the National Post and CBC. She has been a regular contributor at Vice Versa, a Dutch media outlet about international cooperation, and News Decoder, a global journalist platform for youth.

Besides using her pen, Lizan uses her voice as a singer. She’s recorded an EP with “Ivy’s Trial” and played in several bands — she part of the Populist Collective and writes her own work. Recently, her song “Human Grace”, written and recorded together with Mpanzu Bamenga, was released on Spotify and featured on national radio (NPO1).

Finally, she has been teaching courses in her field of expertise at the University of Amsterdam’s PPLE (Politics, Psychology, Law and Economics) college since 2019.