Erasmus Building gallery expanded with 48 portraits of female professors

Since Tuesday, visitors to the first floor of the Erasmus Building have been surrounded by portraits of female professors. The professors represented gallery has been expanded with 48 portraits, which were officially unveiled that day.

The first part of the gallery opened in 2022. On Tuesday, 48 new faces were added. The gallery is an initiative of the IDEA Centre and the Stichting Universitair Historisch Kabinet (SUHK), and highlights gender diversity at the top of academia. Many of the portraits elsewhere at the university depict men. Professors represented is helping to change that.

‘Women did this’

“This gallery broadens people’s idea of who can hold leadership positions”, says professor Jacco van Sterkenburg, the university’s chief diversity officer and head of the IDEA Centre. Professors represented adds to all the portraits already on display at the university; it does not replace them. “We’re not erasing history, but visitors can now walk through that development”, says Suzie Hermán of the SUHK.

“Women did this, this is seriously great”, says Hermán. Women have always been part of EUR’s academic history, she says, and that history certainly deserves to be visible. The portrait gallery is a visible expression of EUR’s aim to pay more attention to women’s heritage. It adds to the university’s heritage.

A sense of pride

The gallery fills Jantine Schuit with pride. The rector says the university aims to reflect society. Diversity, she says, is also about representing different ways of thinking. Professor Yijing Wang, whose portrait is also in the gallery, also emphasises the importance of diversity. “Diversity in a learning environment affects the way you approach things; greater diversity gives you a greater sense of freedom.”

Wang considers it an honour to be part of the university’s story. She says it can be harder for many women to enter academia. “Female academics face certain challenges, such as combining having children with an academic career.” She says the gallery also serves as a ’round of applause’ for students graduating here. “Many graduation ceremonies and thesis defences take place in the Erasmus Building. When graduates walk out, the portrait gallery is, as it were, applauding them.”

Role models

It has not always been a given that young female researchers would have role models. The current Executive Board is the first in EUR’s history to be made up entirely of women. Schuit recalls that at the start of her career, she did not really have a role model she could look up to. “Women in ‘my day’ often had a fairly masculine way of behaving. If I behaved that way too, I would be playing a role, whereas women should be able to be themselves.” Schuit says she has heard that people see her as a role model precisely because she is herself.

She hopes the gallery will provide role models for a new generation. “So that they think: ‘This is a career that could suit me too.’ What I want to tell young women at the start of their careers is: don’t doubt yourself, believe in your own strength and dare to dream. Making mistakes is part of the learning process.”