Susan Garvin retires

Susan Garvin has retired from the EUI after 18 years of service.  In her career at the EUI she worked across several services, including the LAW department, the SPS department, the Secretary General’s office, and, most recently, the Max Weber Programme, where she was the Administrative Assistant of the Programme for the last seven years.

In an interview with EUI Life, Susan noted the changes she witnessed since the mid-1990s, the most significant for her being the growth of the Institute and the digitalization of working life.  According to Garvin, the larger administration and the increased use of online tools rendered the atmosphere among staff members less intimate for her, with more ‘online business’.  She fondly recalls, for example, her interactions with the EUI switchboard operators, through whom all external calls were placed up until the late 1990s. ‘You became friends with them’, she states.  Indeed, these interpersonal relationships are what Susan will miss most in her retirement, especially the daily contact with friends and colleagues and the pleasure of working with the Max Weber Fellows. For Susan, a highlight of her job was ‘meeting so many new and fun people from all over the world, every year’.

Now that she has retired, Susan looks forward to spending more time with her horses.  She will also continue publishing on the theme of horses on her site www.esserecavallo.com, where one may already find the three books and numerous articles she has written.

When asked whether she’ll be back to visit the EUI, there is no hesitation: ‘Of course – I have many good friends and valued colleagues at the EUI, plus coming in to meet up with the many former Max Weber Fellows who come back for conferences etc. I live relatively locally. I think if I had been saying a permanent ‘goodbye’ when I retired it would have been much harder for me!  As it is I get the best of both worlds’.