At the meeting of the Academic Council on 2 February 2015, the members of the council elected Nina Javette Koefoed as their new chair. She is taking over from Per Stounbjerg, who has been chair since 2012.

“It’s been an intensive and challenging period. The council was established at the same time as the faculty, and we had to adopt a whole swathe of joint guidelines as well as structures for including staff and students at all levels. The council has played an active role in identifying and rectifying some of the problems that arose during the development process. Internally things are now settling down; but the government’s degree programme resizing initiative means that there are plenty of challenges in the pipeline. I’m confident that Nina is exactly the right person to chair the council and establish a constructive dialogue with the management during the year ahead – or hopefully for a number of years to come,” says Per Stounbjerg.

Nina Javette Koefoed is also looking forward to the challenge:

“I look forward to continuing the work we’ve been doing in the Academic Council with Per in the chair. I believe that the council is an important political body at faculty and university level, a forum in which representatives of the staff can play a part in central, strategic discussions about the council’s work and the framework within which it takes place. The political and financial framework for the faculty is changing fast at the moment, and we are also in the final phase of a process of restructuring that has lasted a long time. I look forward to helping to ensure that the Academic Council can be an active and clearly defined aspect of our academic, political and strategic discussions in this situation. I also think it’s very important to support the links between the Academic Council and the academic environments with a view to creating broad debates about the topics that we deal with in the council,” says Koefoed.

Nina Javette Koefoed is an associate professor at the School of Culture and Society. Her research has focused primarily on the relationship between the individual and the state in Denmark in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the moment she is working on a project concerning social relationships in 18th-century households, and a project concerning co-citizenship and suffrage in the late 19th century. She has played an active role in university politics since she was a student; and in her capacity as PhD degree programme director she has performed administrative, management and political tasks at school and faculty level, as well as regularly contributing ideas and solutions to discussions of faculty politics.

• See Nina Javette Koefoed’s homepage

Facts about the Academic Council

The aim of the Academic Council is to ensure influence and inclusion in academic issues in a broad sense, including the internal distribution of funding by the faculties and issues related to research, talent development, education and knowledge exchange. The council also helps to set up the committees that assess applicants for academic positions, as well as awarding PhDs and higher doctoral degrees. The Academic Council can also issue statements to the rector.

• See a list of members of the Academic Council at the Faculty of Arts