Testimonial: Gün Semin (1990-1993)

I had the honor of presiding over the Association while it was still the EAESP between 1990 and 1993 and was lucky enough to have the good fortune of serving the Association during this period with some excellent committee members. They were Tony Manstead, Luciano Arcuri, Janos Laszlo, Bernard Rimé, John Rijsman and Jorge Vala. Without their joint efforts the Association would have not taken some important steps that have shaped its future. Before becoming the President, I, as a member of the EC initiated the ISSN registration of the Association’s Bulletin in March, 1989. This gave the Association the option of making it a formal journal. Indeed, this was in the context of my re-negotiating Wiley’s earlier agreement regarding the EJSP. This renegotiation yielded extremely favorable financial conditions for the Association.

To me, the highlights during my Presidency were three specific events, the first of which has endured beyond my period in the form of the formidable Executive Officer of the Association: Sibylle Classen. Prior to my presidency Amélie Mummendey, then treasurer of the Association, had asked Sibylle, her secretary at the University of Münster, to bring clarity into the records of the Association’s membership and its finances. When Amélie's tenure as a member of the Executive Committee came to an end in 1990, I asked Sibylle if she would be interested in continuing working for the Association, but now as an employee of the Association. What evolved after that is history: She became EAESP’s Administrative Secretary with an increasing workload and responsibilities ending up as the Executive Officer of the EASP and, in fact, the only genuinely ‘collective memory’ of the Association.

The second and third events that I initiated were to bring social psychologists on both sides of the Atlantic together and forge a bond between SESP and our Association on two occasions. The second event resulted in the 1992 ‘Joint Meeting of SESP and EAESP’ at Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve with Jeff Nuttin and Jacques-Philippe Leyens as the local organizers. The third event was to set up the next meeting, this time in the US, with the invaluable cooperation of Bill Crano. As then chair of SESP, Bill was a likeminded colleague who had already made major contributions towards enhancing European Social Psychology. The actual meeting took place in 1995 in Washington DC.