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Conditions of institutionalization Veronica Vasterling (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) The instutional context in which I teach gender studies at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, is a Center for Women's Studies (www.ru.nl/cvv) that recently changed its name to Institute for Gender Studies. The institute is more multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary than is mostly the case with centers or institutes like this. Our institute is unique in that almost all the disciplines of the Humanities ánd the Social Sciences are represented. The institute consists of tenured staff and researchers with a temporary contract. The permanent staff teaches both in the institute and in the university department that represents their disciplinary affiliation. As only departments - and not centers and institutes and the like - are recognized as autonomous organisational units within the university, appointments are always by and in the department that represents the disciplinary affiliation of the staff member. Effectively, permanent staff members have double appointments in that they work both in the Institute for Gender Studies and in their respective departments. Most of the staff feels that this double institutional context is the best option in view of possible modalities of institutionalization. This is especially true with respect to research. One needs to stay in touch with developments in one's disciplinary field in order to contribute productively to the interdisciplinary research project of the Institute for Gender Studies. Though most of us are quite happy with this type of institutionalization of gender studies, there is a tendency on the part of University Board to get rid of small semi-autonomous institutes and centers in favor of a streamlined organisation consisting of only (big) departments. The preference for this condition of institutionalization however, contradicts the University Board's emphasis, in tandem with the Dutch Research Foundation, on the importance of interdisciplinary research. As staff members of a productive and flourishing interdisciplinary institute we have grown wary of the much professed importance of interdisciplinarity. In this case, as no doubt in several others, many decision makers in institutional politics don't put their money where their mouth is. |