NORTH-SOUTH CENTRE - ETH - North-South Centre North-South ...

Moving in a dynamic environment
Beyond the ongoing research collaboration and capacity development programmes, the
main activity of the North-South Centre in 2009 was the development of our strategy.
Throughout the year, we maintained high internal and external visibility by organising
events, being present in fora, and communicating via our established tools. A new
and promising experience for us is negotiating with non-traditional funding agencies.
One of the encouraging developments in 2009 was the
steadily growing number and disciplinary breadth in membership.
At the end of the year, we had more than 100 members
from 10 out of 16 departments, including some 50
active and retired professors. This is equivalent to approximately
10% of all ETH professors. Thus, the North-South
Centre is well represented among the ETH faculty. The research
and teaching commitment of our members is the
bulk of activities of the North-South Centre. While this
chapter focuses on the strategic and management perspectives
of our programme, these activities are portrayed in the
respective chapters of this report.
Smooth governance and management
The governance structures proved fully functional. When
the President of the North-South Centre was on a sabbatical
abroad, the two vice-presidents continued to lead the Centre
Barbara Becker, Managing Director
of the North-South Centre
smoothly. The Steering Committee met three times,
thereof once specifically to approve the new strategy. The
General Assembly took place in conjunction with the Annual
Conference in September. It elected Stefanie Engel (D-UWIS)
as new vice-president to replace Renate Schubert (D-GESS)
who continues to serve on the Steering Committee.
The management team remained constant until December
2009 when Emma Lindberg joined to support us for the
three-day conference “Tropentag”, which will be organised at
the ETH Zurich in 2010. When Isabelle Gómez announced
that she would start her new career in the diplomatic service
of Switzerland, Emma Lindberg accepted to take over her
portfolio from March 2010. In July, the management office
moved to new premises in Hochstrasse 60a, higher up on the
“Zürichberg”. One advantage of the new location is the immediate
vicinity to NADEL. Another advantage is the quiet
environment and the building informally called “North-
South studio”, which further supports our good teamwork.
New strategy
In 2008, it became apparent that the business plan of 2006
needed to be complemented with a mid- to long-term
strategy. Consequently, the Steering Committee started a
strategy process by appointing a strategy taskforce. The process
was supported by Jürg Krummenacher (BHP – Brugger
und Partner Ltd.) as external consultant and involved the
members, the management team and external stakeholders.
This process occupied us throughout the entire year,
until the resulting strategy was approved in November 2009.
The strategy positions us much more clearly than before in
the ETH-internal environment and among our Swiss peers.
In addition, our four new research areas “Food security”,
“Natural resource management”, “Urban and rural transformation”,
and “Technology and infrastructure” cover a broad
range of disciplinary strengths, cutting across the majority
of ETH departments. The strategy is presented in more detail
in a separate chapter (see p. 8).
5
Profile
A word from the Managing Director