We are very sorry to share the sad news of the sudden passing away of our former Rector professor Louis Emmerij at the age of 84 (nearly 85) last Tuesday 26 November. Louis Emmerij was Rector of ISS from 1976 to 1985 and also served as Chair of the Advisory Board of ISS from 2002 to 2009.
Professor Louis Emmerij was a distinguished international economist who has done a lot for ISS. He made the institute a less supply- and more demand-driven organization while putting the emphasis more on the Masters programme rather than the shorter diploma programmes. In addition to that he introduced the PhD programme. Louis Emmerij was generally known as Big Louis, reflecting that he was tall, charming and quite a personality. He had a huge network, both in the Netherlands and abroad and can be characterized as an inspirational networker pur sang.
During his time as ISS Rector Louis Emmerij was also President of EADI, the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes, from 1978 to 1984. He has been a key person in giving EADI its current shape, working intensively on integrating all European countries in the EADI network.
Before joining ISS as a Rector, Louis Emmerij worked as Director of the ILO’s World Employment Programme which organized pioneering studies on employment problems in Colombia, Sri Lanka and Kenya. After his term as Rector at ISS ended, he was appointed as President of the OECD Development Centre in Paris. In 1993 he became the Special Advisor to the President of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington and from 1999 to 2010 he was Co-Director of the United Nations Intellectual History Project and Senior Research Fellow at the City University of New York.
Professor Ashwani Saith had a wonderful interview with professor Louis Emmerij in Development & Change in 2005.
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