Nominator
- Danial Ali Akbari
Election platform
In my role as a board member, I would focus on three points.
1. Work to reduce the number of temporary jobs.
A large part of the employment at the faculty is temporary. Such contracts entail a lack of predictability, and thus increased stress. Stress can reduce the quality of work and deplete mental health. By increasing the portion of permanent contracts, we can both increase the quality of research and improve working conditions.
2. Work to improve our work-life balance
For employees with temporary employment, unclear guidelines for further employment entails that one may feel obliged to continuously be available, and thus overprove your competence. In the long term, this means that the work-life balance is disturbed. Clear and reasonable criteria for further employment will improve the work-life balance.
3. Work to increase the integrity of research, particularly through increased transparency regarding funders and counteracting reputation laundering via research funding
In recent decades we have observed an increased skepticism of research results and scientific inquiry. A sound part of this skepticism is based on what is perceived to be conflicts of interest. In other words, the public rightly believes that states, corporations, organizations, and individuals may have an interest (moneyed or otherwise) to be seen funding research in order to launder their reputations, or an interest in funding selected research agendas that align with said interests.
By reviewing guidelines determining which actors can fund research, as well as working to ensure that a larger portion of research grants are completely anonymized (and thereby prevent dubious financiers from laundering their reputation through research funding), we can strengthen the position of the scientific enterprise in general and counteract conspiracy theories in particular.