Aline Brisset. Taking with her a souvenir from the FREE Project.
The end of the academic year 2014-15 sadly heralds the departure of Aline Brisset, pivot and pillar of the Centre for European Integration between 2010 and 2014 and of the EU-Asia Institute since then. After five and half years at ESSCA, with one foot in accreditation management and one in the logistics of research, she will follow her husband to the city of Compiègne, located north-east of Paris.
Only two months after her arrival, she already organised in the most professional manner the 8th WISH Workshop for Young Scholars in February 2010, and only one month from her depature, she managed the 10th Annual Sport and EU Conference in June 2015 with exactly the same attention to detail, switching between English, French and German in her correspondence with the participants and making sure for every little problem there was a solution.
In between she has been instrumental in the running of the FREE Project, which she accompanied from its very inception, from organising the first exploratory meeting on ESSCA’s Paris campus in 2010 to the concluding conference in Brussels in March 2015. In between, her skills turned out to be absolutely indispensable for hosting the kick-off conference in Angers in spring 2012 and setting up the meeting of the scientific advisory board at half-time in Vienna in autumn 2013, juggling with travel time-tables, hotel bookings, invoices and minutes as requested. Aline was a remarkably meticulous proof-reader for any kind of document – from reports of all kinds to the E-mail you better read again before addressing to a colleague – and she had the rare gift of knowing how to communicate appropriately with VIPs and not-so-VIPs, with researchers and technocrats, even with accountants and IT people!
Her impressive stamina over these years was fuelled by several hundred high-quality dark chocolate bars (which are unfortunately not eligible as direct costs under FP7 budgetary provisions – something the European Commission should seriously think over).
Aline’s competences, her reliability and her humour will be sorely missed by the team in Angers, the members of the institute, and the FREE consortium. We take comfort in knowing that she will have fond memories of her stressful, but also successful years at ESSCA.
