ILLC PhD Newsletter

December 2016

Representation

You must have heard about the UvA referendum on democratisation, and we hope you too have filled in the questionaire about representation of students and employees. There is a (Dutch) Folia article about the turnout. In the same light, we have been thinking about how we can better represent the interests of you, the ILLC PhD community.

• We want to be transparent about what we do: we have initialized this newsletter to keep you updated and our meeting minutes are available on the website.
• We want you to have a say: we ask for your input for our meetings with the management team and we strive to enable a discussion on the PhD-day. We are considering the option of having council elections, and would like to hear your feedback on that.

Council pursuits

The TA-allocation tool that has been used to match TAs and courses for the last couple of years was built and maintained by Bastiaan, for which we'd like to thank him. Together with the MT, we are now striving towards an internal ILLC version to replace it, so that it can be maintained by the ILLC office and in that way be sustainable for future use.

Announcements

• We had the idea to revise the common room with nicer lights and furniture. Share your ideas on the poster in the common room, or contact us to become a member of the team to make it happen.
• Both Iris and Sara will be leaving the Council in a month or two, so we are very much looking for new members. Please consider it, and don't hesitate to ask any of us about what you should expect.
• Also, the faculty-level PhD council of Humanities and the university-level UvAPro are looking for members. Contact Gert-Jan Munneke for more information.
• Do not forget to log on to Surfspot (with your UvA credentials) before the end of the year, in order to obtain your free credits that allow you to buy software and hardware.