LOVA – Honorary membership awards
November 25, 2022, former LOVA co-chairs Gerdien Steenbeek and Annelou Ypeij have been awarded a Duo Honorary Membership of LOVA. It was presented to them during the retirement party of Gerdien Steenbeek at the Department of Cultural Anthropology of Utrecht University. Gerdien had worked there as Senior Lecturer for nearly forty years, teaching many generations of students in various study programmes in Anthropology as well in a university-wide Bachelor’s programme in Liberal Arts and Sciences. Annelou, who is a close friend of Gerdien, had helped to organise the retirement meeting and had retired from her job as Senior Lecturer at the Center for Latin American Research and Documentation (CEDLA) of the University of Amsterdam in August 2020. Because of corona pandemic, only an informal farewell party could be organised for Annelou at that time.
Gerdien and Annelou both have been active in LOVA since the mid-1980s when they were students in anthropology and got involved in organising various LOVA meetings at their university, at Utrecht University for Gerdien and the University of Amsterdam for Annelou. When in 1995 LOVA was reorganised from an informal network and platform into a formal association Gerdien became a board member with the responsibility of organising annual LOVA Study Days. In 1998 Annelou took over Gerdien’s position on the LOVA board. From July 2001 to October 2002 Gerdien first and Annelou as her successor fulfilled the chair position in the LOVA board because of illness of then-chair Karin Willemse and from June 2004 to June 2010 they acted as co-chairs.
At the start of the retirement party, Gerdien and Annelou entered the hall of festivities surrounded by eight senior LOVA members, four of which received honourary membership previously: Joke Schrijvers in 2002, José van Santen in 2004, Willy Jansen in 2011, Marion den Uyl in 2012.
