About Anne
Anne de Graaf is Dutch, born in San Francisco. As Senior Lecturer, International Relations at Amsterdam University College she has designed and taught several courses about human rights, human security, violence, conflict and peacebuilding. She was the inaugural Chief Diversity Officer of the University of Amsterdam for over four years. De Graaf is also an award-winning author of over 80 books, with more than 5 million sold worldwide.
She graduated from Stanford University and holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland (2018). Her PhD is entitled: Speaking Peace into Being: Voice, Youth and Agency in a Deeply Divided Society. It explores the roles of young people--specifically their voices--in conflict and peacebuilding.
For many years she travelled to post-conflict areas throughout West and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, interviewing young people and writing about what she saw and heard. Her teen and adult novels originate from these interviews: fiction based on fact. The topics vary from AIDS survival to former youth combatants.
She says her motivation comes from questions she keeps coming up against, questions like: Why is a child worth more in one part of the world than in other parts? The NGO Peace by Peace, co-created with students at Amsterdam University College, explores similar questions including: How can young people engage in community building, despite—and because of—our deeply divided societies?
De Graaf now consults for universities and think tanks interested in empowering young people in peacebuilding processes. She provides training in a wide variety of peacebuilding skills, including transformative dialogue and active listening, as well as creative writing.
Her next novel is a literary fiction novel about an art detective, the nature of courage and how war changes us.
Bridge-building. Being a bridge. Teaching and writing. Suspense novels and children’s books. Listening, speaking to and about young people--these are the tools of her trade: Words--both written and spoken.
