Changes in board of IVOC

Recently, there have also been some changes in our board.

Prof. Maaike van Berkel is the new chairwoman of the board of our foundation. She has succeeded Prof. Dr. Paul Bakker. Van Berkel was already a general member of the board. She studied Arabic language and culture, and European medieval history at the University of Amsterdam. After obtaining her PhD in 2003, she worked at the same university in the history department. Since 2015 she has been working as professor of medieval history at Radboud University. She is currently researching the question of how cities in the Middle East got water in the Middle Ages.

Fr. Iulian Dancã is now part of the general board on behalf of the Assumptionists, as a successor of fr. Michel Kubler. He is an Assumptionist priest of Romanian descent and currently head of the Bucharest community. His career at the Assumption started in Romania in 2003. He went to Florence, Italy and lived in France for more than eleven years. He studied theology in Strasbourg at masters level (2006-2011). Then he was sent to Montpellier for a few years to do pastoral work. He was vicar in the parish of Saint Augustin de l'Aqueduc, chaplain of the College of the Assumption and head of a youth centre. On June 29, 2013, he was consecrated as a priest in Montpellier by Mgr. Carré. Back in Romania he started a PhD project at the Ecumenical Center of Sibiu with research on the theologian André Scrima. He has been director of the ecumenical centre of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew in Bucharest for three years. He is also part of the editorial team of Itinéraires Augustiniens, in which he has  published several articles, in particular about André Scrima.

The Institute of Eastern Christian Studies would like to thank Paul Bakker and Michel Kubler for their commitment to our institute in the past years!