To celebrate Marieke and the work she has done for the AISSR, we held an online goodbye party with AISSR staff. During the party, we spoke with Marieke about her accomplishments of the past year as well as her wishes for the AISSR in the future.

Some memorable moments that came to Marieke’s mind were the discussions during our annual Harvest Day in CREA last November, as well as attending the mock interviews of colleagues competing for a national or international grants. With Harvest day, we made space for a discussion on ‘Good practice’ in academic research, as well as book presentations that celebrate slow science. In the mock interviews, Marieke enjoyed seeing all the vibrant research ideas and plans, and also the generosity with which colleagues at AISSR help each other prepare for interviews.

Moreover, several actions have been taken by Marieke during the past months that will have an impact on the long-term future of AISSR. Most importantly, she chaired discussions on restoring the balance between our teaching and research budgets. This means that AISSR is now in a better financial position, with the scope to make long-term strategic plans. These plans include a programme that will allow unsuccessful applications by AISSR staff for a big grant to still be (partially) pursued by hiring a post-doc. In addition, discussions about academic integrity and data management were high on Marieke’s agenda, like advocating for setting up mandatory integrity training for PhD students and new staff.

Unfortunately, much of Marieke’s directorship was marked by Covid, which disrupted the trajectories of early career scholars and PhD students, as well as all of us. AISSR has been able to fund budgets to extend contracts where needed, and this will remain an important point of attention for the time to come.

Marieke also highlighted how much she enjoyed working with the AISSR Bureau. She took the lead on newly introducing AISSR staff members in the ‘Who is who’ newsletters, with the goal to make sure that researchers know whom to call on to support them. More generally, Marieke tried to maintain transparency about the work of AISSR, for example in procedures for Research Priority Areas. Marieke thanked all AISSR staff for the good cooperation during her directorship.

On behalf of the whole AISSR, we wished Marieke all the best in her future endeavors and offered her our gift: a dinner at Vuurtoreneiland. Marieke will remain connected to the ‘Transnational Configurations, Conflict an Governance’ group of AISSR. She is moving to the BG3 building, and hopes to remain in touch with AISSR researchers and help build bridges between the social sciences and humanities in the next years.

This has marked the end of Marieke’s directorship. We now look forward to welcoming prof. dr. John Grin, director ad interim of the AISSR from 1^st of March 2022.