Lene Rachel Andersen

Lene Rachel Andersen (born May 15, 1968) is a Danish author, economist, futurist, and philosopher. She was born and raised in Taastrup, a suburb west of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her first books formed the series Baade-Og. her books in English are The Nordic Secret (2017), Metamodernity (2019), Bildung (2020), What is Bildung? (2021, online), and Libertism (2022). In 2018, Andersen co-founded the Copenhagen based think-tank Nordic Bildung and the folk-Bildung association Fremvirke. In 2019, she was the main initiator of European Bildung Day and in 2020 the co-founder of the European Bildung Network. Since January 2019, Andersen has been a member of the Club of Rome.

From age 16, Andersen produced radio programs and wrote scripts for radio and television satire.

After studying business economy for three years, Andersen worked as a temp teacher and a temp secretary for two years before she studied theology for four years with the specific goal become a pastor in the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church. During her years of theology studies, she wrote entertainment for Danish television, in 1993, she had a religious crisis and quit her studies when she decided to convert to Judaism.

Andersen's debut as an author was in 2005, when she published the first book in the five volume and 2,300 page book series Baade-Og (eng. Both-And, 2005–2009). She has since written several books, among them Democracy Handbook, which is also a website: www.democracy-handbook.org. She also wrote The Nordic Secret: A European Story of Beauty and Freedom (2017) edited by Tomas Björkman. Her latest book is Libertism: Grasping the 21st Century.

Andersen leads Det Andersenske Forlag (Andersenske Publishing), an independent publisher in Denmark that focuses on popularizing philosophy and topics essential to democracy.

In 2011, Andersen was appointed as a member of the Danish government's short-lived Værdikommissionen (Values Commission).

In 2018, Andersen co-founded the thinking lab Nordic Bildung. Today she is president of the organization, which is the main organizer of Global Bildung Network, Global Bildung Day, and other bildung networks and events.

The book series Baade-Og (Both-And), consists of five books with the subtitles Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. They are written as a dialogue between the retired television producer Cornelius Magnussen, who is highly erudite and currently admitted to the psychiatric ward, and a lifestyle journalist, Tenna E. Rasmussen, who interviews him for five days.