Jurgen De Wispelaere is a former occupational therapist turned political theorist and policy scholar. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Tampere (Finland), and in this capacity forms part of the Kela-led research team preparing the upcoming national basic income experiment in Finland. Previously he worked at universities in Montreal, Barcelona, Dublin and London.

His major research interest is the political analysis of basic income, which was the topic of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Tampere. Jurgen De Wispelaere has published extensively on basic income in leading international journals, including most recently Journal of Social Policy, Journal of Public Policy, Politics, Political Studies, International Social Security Review and Social Service Review, as well as specialist edited volumes. He is a founding co-editor of the journal Basic Income Studies and recently co-edited Basic Income: An Anthology of Contemporary Research (Wiley 2013). In addition to basic income, he is interested in disability rights, organ donation, and adoption and has published on all these topics. He is currently co-editing the Routledge Handbook in the Philosophy of Childhood and Children (with Gideon Calder and Anca Gheaus).

Jurgen De Wispelaere is a board member of BICN/RCRG (currently taking a backseat due to his relocation to Europe) and was the co-convenor of the 2014 BIEN Congress in Montreal. He is a big fan of death metal and believes a basic income would provide much needed support for the underground music scene.