Gabrielle van den Berg: 'We can put ourselves in the spotlight more'
Gabrielle van den Berg has been appointed Scientific Director of LIAS from 1 September. 'I hope to be able to make a difference.'
Van den Berg finds the institute in turbulent times. When she was approached for the position, there was still talk of a faculty reorganisation, in which some LIAS-related specialisations would disappear. 'I did what I could to resist then,' says Van den Berg, 'but in the position of Scientific Director I can probably make more of a difference.'
Fewer courses
Although the faculty is now in better financial shape, it still needs to make cuts. 'We are relieved that the reorganisation with forced redundancies is off the table for the time being,' says Van den Berg. 'However, there are still changes to be made to get everything back on track. Everyone is allowed to stay and so all expertise will be retained, nevertheless the teaching programmes will have to be cut back. That is a bitter pill.'
The downsizing is necessary to make the institute future-proof. Van den Berg: 'The task is to make sure the institute can keep running with the existing staff, even if in time people leave through natural attrition. We have to avoid going into the red, although we can only partly influence that. It is already very positive that LIAS is so successful when it comes to obtaining research grants. In recent years, research projects have been funded in both Asian Studies, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and Religious Studies. It is very important that our research flourishes, also for the different programmes we offer. Unfortunately, the programmes housed in LIAS don’t all attract very many students. We would like to see that change, but at the same time we also have a responsibility to maintain disciplines that are unique to the Netherlands by means of high-quality educational programmes.'
Looking outwards
To preserve LIAS's unique expertise as much as possible, Van den Berg wants to look outwards more. 'Almost every individual staff member is already involved in knowledge validation in one way or another. If our expertise is asked for, we are happy to help, whether that request comes from the media, the government or the cultural sector. I would like to make those initiatives more visible and, where possible, more streamlined. So much happens from LIAS, often in collaboration with other parties, such as the RMO, the Leiden Asia Centre, NINO, and the University Library, for example. I would like to find a wider audience for that, also to better highlight our rich research.'
Van den Berg would also like to look at collaborating with the other institutes. 'We already work together a lot in an informal way, but you see that the structure of different institutes and programmes sometimes makes that difficult, also because of the financial organisation. It would be nice if we could remove those obstacles to optimise cooperation.’