De Dépendance

14/08/2026

On Wednesday, September 23, we welcome one of the world’s leading scholars of Europe: Timothy Garton Ash. He will speak on the occasion of the Dutch translation of his new book, Europe in 7 1/2 Chapters — The Shortest Introduction to the World’s Oldest and Newest Continent.

Timothy Garton Ash has written eleven books chronicling Europe’s transformation since the Cold War. A close observer of landmark events, he interviewed key political figures and explored how change shaped everyday life across the continent. He is Professor of European Studies and Isaiah Berlin Fellow Emeritus at Oxford, Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a Guardian columnist.

📍 Theater Zuidplein
🗓️ Wednesday 23 September
⏰ Talk at 20:00h
🍸 Drinks from 19:00h
📲 Info and tickets on our website

05/08/2026

On Tuesday, November 3, we welcome acclaimed Guardian journalist Hettie O’Brien, author of The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself. In the book, she takes readers on a thrilling, eye-opening investigation into this secretive wing of the finance industry, revealing how it is reshaping our everyday lives and how power and wealth now operate. She follows the money across continents and examines how a hidden group of dealmakers created a weapon of economic mass destruction that might yet blow up our financial system.

📍 WORM Rotterdam
🗓️ Tuesday 3 November
⏰ Talk at 20.00h
🍸 Drinks from 19.00h
📲 Info and tickets on our website

Design:

In recent decades, private equity firms like Blackstone, KKR, and the Carlyle Group have quietly become some of the most powerful companies in the world. They own our hospitals, our nurseries, our schools, our farmland, our wind farms. Their reach stretches from formerly public utilities to the houses we rent and the food we eat. In doing so, they have reshaped capitalism in their own image – all by using debt as a weapon to produce vast returns for the companies that own and control them.

31/07/2026

On Tuesday, October 6, acclaimed journalist and The Atlantic staff writer Gal Beckerman joins us to discuss his new book, How to Be a Dissident. The book is an invigorating guide to fighting back, part philosophy, part history, and part manual for living with integrity in an age of authoritarian drift.

📍 Arminius Rotterdam
🗓️ Tuesday 6 October
⏰ Talk at 20:00h
🍸 Drinks from 19:30h
📲 Info and tickets on our website

Design

Drawing on the stories of dissidents from around the globe and across time, from Socrates to Ai Weiwei, as well as thinkers such as Hannah Arendt and Iris Murdoch, Beckerman reveals the defining characteristics these extraordinary figures share: a set of attributes and practices for anyone navigating the pressures of modern tyranny. He shows that dissidence is a human capacity we can all cultivate; a refusal to betray one’s inner voice, no matter the cost.

29/07/2026

On Wednesday, September 23, we welcome one of the world’s leading scholars of Europe: Timothy Garton Ash. He will speak on the occasion of the Dutch translation of his new book, Europe in 7 1/2 Chapters — The Shortest Introduction to the World’s Oldest and Newest Continent.

📍 Theater Zuidplein
🗓️ Wednesday 23 September
⏰ Talk at 20:00h
🍸 Drinks from 19:00h
📲 Info and tickets on our website

Design:

Drawing on a lifetime of reporting, analysis and engagement with European politics, Garton Ash offers a CT scan of the continent today. He begins by looking at Europe from the outside, acknowledging the legacy of colonialism and cultural imperialism, as he assesses Europe’s past achievements, contradictions and future prospects. Timothy Garton Ash will be joined in conversation by political scientist Theresa Kuhn (University of Amsterdam) and foreign policy expert Anna van Zoest (Netherlands Atlantic Association) to discuss Europe’s place in a rapidly changing world.

16/06/2026

We have two new events lined up. �

🕵️‍♂️ How to Be a Dissident with Gal Beckerman

Is there a right way to rebel? How do we push back at a time when extreme views are becoming commonplace and democracies are under attack? What can we do when we face a moral dilemma and are uncertain how to act?��

Date: Tuesday 6 October
Location: Debatpodium Arminius

💸 How Private Equity Erodes Our Societies with Hettie O'Brien

In recent decades, private equity firms have quietly become some of the most powerful companies in the world. They own our hospitals, our nurseries, our schools, our farmland, our wind farms. Their reach stretches from formerly public utilities to the houses we rent and the food we eat. ��

Date: Tuesday, 3 November
Location: WORM Rotterdam�

More info and tickets:
https://dedependance.eu/

Design: StudioSpass

20/05/2026

Thank you for attending our talk with Paul Krugman on Tuesday 19 May.

In a world facing rising geopolitical tensions, Paul Krugman explored the forces reshaping the global economic order. He was joined in conversation by Sandra Phlippen, Alanna O’Malley and Aksel Erbahar.

We hope to welcome you back soon at one of our following events:
🇪🇺 Timothy Garton Ash: On Europe
🗓️ Wednesday 23 September at Theater Zuidplein.

💸 How Private Equity Erodes Our Societies with Hettie O’Brien
🗓️ Tuesday 3 November at WORM.

More info and tickets:
https://dedependance.eu/

📸 Aad Hoogendoorn

19/03/2026

06/03/2026

One week to go until Ben Tarnoff and Quinn Slobodian will discuss their forthcoming book ‘Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed’ at .

👉 Tickets are moving fast. Secure your seat via our website.

28/02/2026

On Saturday March 14th, two of today’s most incisive thinkers on technology, capitalism, political imagination and the rise of the populist right, Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, will join us at to discuss their upcoming book ‘Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed’.

If Fordism defined the capitalism of the twentieth century, Muskism may define the twenty-first. Fordism helped build the welfare state. Musk undoes it. He thrives on dependence while preaching freedom. His rockets run on subsidies; his satellites run the battlefield; his social networks train the AI that trains us. Muskism sells itself as the future, but entrenches age-old hierarchies. It offers autonomy for some and exclusion for others. It’s libertarian but state-fed, pro-natalist but anti-immigrant, futurist but reactionary.

📍
🗓️ Saturday 14 March
⏰ 20:00 (drinks from 19:30)
📲 Info and tickets on our website

21/02/2026

🐦 Muskism: Playbook for a Postliberal Age with Quinn Slobodian & Ben Tarnoff

On Saturday March 14 we welcome two of today’s most incisive thinkers on technology, capitalism, political imagination and the rise of the populist right: Quinn Slobodian (Crack-Up Capitalism, Hayek’s Bastards) and Ben Tarnoff (Internet for the People, Voices from the Valley). Together, they will unpack their new book Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. In this highly anticipated work they examine Elon Musk not as an individual, but as a symptom and avatar of our postliberal age. Musk isn’t a glitch in the system — he is the system. His worldview promises sovereignty through technology: plug in, power up, and become self-reliant. But the more you connect, the more he owns you.

📍
🗓️ Saturday 14 March
⏰ 20:00 (drinks from 19:30)
📲 Info and tickets on our website