New Team Takes Shape at IIRE

After four very full years, IIRE Co-Director Susan Caldwell has returned to her permanent work as a professor of psychology at Dawson College in Montreal. Her departure has ushered in a period of staff transition here at the institute. Our team here has to combine a range of tasks: courses, publications, administration and housekeeping. We are reorganizing the staff in order to carry out those tasks as effectively as possible. While an evaluation and possibly a rethinking will follow early in 2005, we would like to take this opportunity to introduce our friends and supporters to some new names and faces.

Eng Que as Building Manager is assuming primary responsibility for the upkeep and use of our Amsterdam headquarters, office management and relations with our renters and supporters. Over the years the IIRE has come to play a steadily more important role as host for progressive organizations that hold their activities here. It is high time for us to concentrate this work in one person's capable hands. Eng's linguistic virtuosity and knowledge of the institute will also be helpful: in addition to English and Dutch she studied Castilian (Spanish) at the University of Nijmegen, and she has taken part in two different IIRE Youth Schools.

At the same time Paul Mepschen has joined our staff as a part-time Programme Associate, assisting ongoing Director Peter Drucker with our courses and publications. Appropriately, Paul's first major task was preparation of the Youth School in August - he too participated in an IIRE Youth School himself ten years ago. He is currently completing his work for a degree in anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, and serves as editor-in-chief for the Dutch socialist newspaper Grenzeloos. Reinforcing the international character of the IIRE's programme is Eva Olaer Ferraren from the Philippines. Having just completed a master's degree at the University of Amsterdam, Eva is moving on to complete her doctorate, under sponsorship of the IIRE. As well as drawing on the institute's resources for her studies Eva will act as an IIRE Fellow during her time here, so that we can benefit not only from her scholarship but also from her extensive experience as a feminist and peace activist in the southern Philippine region of Mindanao. As a Fellow resident in the Netherlands (unlike most of our other Fellows), she will be able to participate fully in our discussions and curriculum planning and development process.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Susan Caldwell for the four years she spent as IIRE Co-Director, years in which she made many friends in Amsterdam who will miss her. For us as an institute her efforts to bring us into the age of Internet particularly have been an enduring contribution to the way we do education.

We would also like to give special thanks to Michèle Vermeulen, who has moved on after years of devoted service to the institute. Her multitude of mostly behind-the-scenes, human and practical contributions to the institute have never been adequately reflected in our publications, though in many cases the words on the page have been the result of her work as a translator. Thanks to her talent for languages (Dutch, English, French and Castilian (Spanish)), she had a tongue in common with everyone who came through our front door. Very often she was the first person that a student, lecturer or staff person with a problem turned to for help. For years to come we will be doing dozens of things, from folding sheets to registering books, the way Michèle taught us to.