Laudation by Sigrid Quack
It is a great honour and pleasure to present – on behalf of the EGOS Board and community – the EGOS Honorary Member 2025:
AnGELIka Zierer. What better moment could there be to honour the outstanding contribution that AnGELIka has made as the association’s
Executive Secretary in the development of the EGOS community over the last 20 years than now, as she retires.
Yes, you have heard correctly:
AnGELIka has been doing that for TWENTY years!
Over this period, AnGELIka has worked with seven EGOS Chairs, more than 20 further EGOS Board members, Colloquium and sub-theme
organizers in the thousands, liaised on innumerable occasions with Sophia Tzagaraki, the Managing Editor of our journals,
and been in touch via email, phone or in person with uncountable EGOS members – all to the best benefit of the community.
Invited to share memories of their time with AnGELIka, EGOS Chairs and collaborators answered with great enthusiasm,
asking me to express their enormous gratitude to you, AnGELIka, praising how you have nourished and developed the collective
identity of EGOS, making it a vibrant association and assuring that each Colloquium would be a success.
To fully understand why AnGELIka has been so important to EGOS, I will take you on a trip back in time to our “machine
room” and reflect on the often undervalued role of the Executive Secretary in academic associations. Doing so brings out how
central AnGELIka has been in navigating the tensions that have characterized EGOS’s growth, as identified in a recent Organization
Studies (OS) article by five of the Chairs she has worked with. She has done so in three functions.
AnGELIka, the supreme orchestrator
EGOS prides itself on providing a maximum of opportunities for scholarly exchange with a decentralized and slim administrative
structure. But how do you do that when the number of Colloquium attendees rises from 1400 to more than 2500, the number of
sub-themes explodes from around 30 to 80, the text to be proofread multiplies accordingly, when even more members need to
be served year after year, a quarter of them new arrivals to be shepherded through EGOS procedures, and Calori rules to be
explained anew to Colloquium organizers every year?
Now, the answer to that question is sitting here in the front row! During the last 20 years, AnGELIka has been the “Jack of
all trades”, as Giuseppe Delmestri puts it. She has been a highly efficient organizer, with a strategic eye for the big picture
combined with painstaking perfectionism on details. AnGELIka has also played a very important role in managing the organization’s
accounts and cultivated a long-term approach that went beyond her outstanding personal commitment. One of her lasting contributions
is, as Florian Kauffmann, her successor as Executive Secretary, highlighted to me, the system of deadlines and guidelines
that orchestrate the “EGOS year” and allows our decentralized and mostly voluntary organization to host high-quality Colloquia
year after year.
All this came together with an endless dedication to EGOS. Few holidays, though often encouraged to take more, sleepless nights
in times of upcoming Colloquia, endless hours in front of her laptop establishing a superb standard of answering 85% of all
requests on an individual basis within four days. As Renate Meyer observes, AnGELIka is the “mater familias of EGOS”.
AnGELIka, the chief plumber facilitating poetry
Paraphrasing the late Jim March, the authors of the aforementioned OS article have described good association leadership as
a combination of ‘plumbing and poetry’. Plumbing provides structures and routines, while keeping them flexible enough to allow
for passion, beauty, and joy in academic work. As foregrounded by Markus Höllerer, there is no doubt about AnGELIka’s tremendous
and absolutely outstanding contribution at the front-line of EGOS:
Being THE contact point with every member whatever the issue of concern, with Colloquium organizers and
sub-theme convenors it was AnGELIka who navigated the tensions between plumbing and poetry in the everyday life of EGOS.
Bernard Forgues highlighted that, even though all the work of policing rules was left to her, AnGELIka has also been incredibly
generous with people, particularly those in trouble. She implemented the rules with flexibility and adaptability if it was
for the best of EGOS. She has done it with a smile and friendly note: No phone call ending without “my dear
” and with one
typical quote being “Wo kein Kläger, da kein Richter“ (“where there is no plaintiff, there is no judge”). It has never been
dull working with AnGELIka because she has a good sense of humor and a great generosity for the limits of all of our human
capacities: “Never assume someone cares just because they say they care; assume the best, prepare for the worst” being one
of her guiding principles.
As Silviya Svejenova remarks, for two decades AnGELIka (fondly called Geli) has been the human face and heart of EGOS, immensely
generous and hospitable in her interactions with EGOSians, always there to help. As Chairs, Board members and Managing Editors
warmly remember from visits, in her Berlin kitchen-slash-office the poetry of cooking and being with friends become interwoven
with work while the cats were observing what was going on from the windowsill.
AnGELIka, the institution-builder
A key challenge for any association is to balance change and continuity. As the linking pin between revolving Chairs and members
of the EGOS Board, AnGELIka has fostered the collective leadership of our association, sustaining institutional memory, the
“one who knows it all”. She has shepherded a long list of Board members and incoming Chairs, including Eero Vaara and myself,
who all benefited from the expertise, knowledge, time, and dedication she tirelessly provided. Her position has not always
been easy because she has stood up for her arguments – but that is what a good Executive Secretary in my view should do –
take a stance! In a gentle way, AnGELIka has also promoted change: She often has motivated previous Colloquium organizers
to run for the elections and bring new experiences and impulses to the EGOS Board. As an ex-officio member of the EGOS Board,
she has thus been a decisive voice in the deliberative leadership of the organization.
AnGELIka’s departure will be a test of institutional robustness for EGOS. But in her wise foresight she has also prepared
for that: After so many years, we are aware, AnGELIka, that it is difficult to “let the baby go” – but we admire the professionalism,
generosity, and attention to big and small things, that you have shown over the last year when you transferred your expertise,
knowledge, and experience to your successor. Florian, in particular, is extremely grateful for this.
Let me close with a quote from dear Sophia because I could not say it more poetically:
“If organization were a superpower, AnGELIka would have a glittering cape, a colour-coded calendar as her shield, and the
keen vision of an eagle. Nothing escapes her notice – not a typo, not a budget overspent, not even the faintest whiff of chaos.
Keeping a silent but vigilant watch over everything, anticipating and averting crises before they even form and making sure
that it all looks effortless. In the wild world of Executive Secretaries, she’s that rare bird with both eagle eyes and a
gentle, guiding wing. Behind every successful EGOS event and smooth-running meeting, there is a quiet force – her name is
AnGELIka.”
AnGELIka, in the name of the EGOS Board and the whole EGOS community, let me thank you for being such a stellar EGOS Executive
Secretary for such a long time, the most devoted EGOSian of all of us, and not least such a generous colleague and friend!