Tuesday 27 January 2009

Partner meeeting in Leuven, Belgium

Emmy (Dilemma Partner) and Digby (Sheffield Co-ordinator) spent a day with our new colleagues (Mia Leijssen and Mathias Dekeyser) recently in Leuven discussing our new partnership in CEP. It was a special day in many ways. It was our first visit to Leuven, the seat of the oldest University in the Low Countries. Leuven itself—only about 10 miles from Brussels—was badly damaged in the first world war, but many of the mediaeval buildings in the city centre and some of the oldest University buildings have been rebuilt. The loss of these buildings was so much deprecated that the rebuilding was a specific requirement of the German peace deal negotiated at Versailles. Parts of the old church, much of the University, and a wonderfully atmospheric beguinage are all original. So walking around the city is like revisiting the middle ages but with the advantage of good sanitation, mobile phones, and a lack of crime and overt medical pathology. We happened, too, to come when there was a Kerstfeest, a Christmas fare at which serious drinking (genever, beer, and mulled wine) and serious eating were both being done. Great! On the subject of beer, it should be noted that Leuven’s first brewery was already a big success in the 14th. century but its most famous owner was a Mr. Artois whose family much later developed the barley Pils ‘Stella’ Artois. The Horn brewery is now the European headquarters of the world’s biggest brewer, a conglomerate based in Brazil. If this sounds to the English reader like industrial beer, the Flemish love of beer and the continued involvement of monasteries in its brewing means that great brews, including what the Americans would call micro-brews, are still plentiful.

Our gracious hosts took us on a tour of the University, founded as a Catholic University in 1425 by Pope Martin V. Erasmus was an early star on the faculty, having come there from one of my current Universities, the University of Cambridge. The University was closed down in 1797 when Leuven was in the territories annexed to France but reopened at Mechelen in 1834, moving back shortly after to Leuven. The University hived off its French speaking part, L’Université catholique de Louvain, to buildings in the Louvain new town in 1968, and so the University we were visiting, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, was entirely Dutch, and increasingly, English speaking. We were visiting the psychology department, but first we went just down the road to the philosophy department where we were allowed to wander in to the senior common room, and admire the baroque architecture. To Emmy’s great joy, we were also able to visit the Husserl archives, smuggled here during the Nazi era to preserve them. The staff of the archives very kindly interrupted their lunch to give us access.

But all of this was secondary to the main purpose of the visit, which was to begin our new partnership in CEP. Mia is a professor of psychology and the director of teaching and learning for her faculty. So she is in a strong position to implement new courses, and once she saw the potential of our materials proved to be keen to do so. Mathias, our likely other collaborator, had spent some time looking at the Moodle site already and had a well organized list of ways that he could assist in developing the CEP project.

It was agreed that the course should remain in English for the purposes of teaching in Leuven. The University was keen to develop English language courses anyway; more students would be more comfortable being taught in English than in French; and both Mia and Mattias had excellent English themselves.

It was also agreed that a new course would be proposed within the Faculty to build on the learning materials, and that the best way forward would be to incorporate them into a taught Doctorate, a fairly new development within the University—as it is in UK Universities—but one that would fit well with the University’s teaching and learning strategy. Mia’s workload is already very high, partly as a consequence of senior posts that she holds in the University beyond her other teaching and administrative duties. Mathias, who is currently working as psychologist in the health service would be employed part-time on the grant and become the main point of contact with the other partners, and the person who would be furthering the project on a day to day basis.

Our meeting was greatly assisted by the state of the art audio-visual facilities in the meeting room were using, and we got through all of our business in an afternoon. We ended the formal part of the day, before visiting an authentic Flemish restaurant, with a mutual exchange of books—Emmy gave her latest to Mia, and Mia returned the compliment.