Reinventing Traditions. Three questions to Mirko Noordegraaf

Mirko Noordegraaf: Societal impact is a key concept in the Netherlands; in Dutch universities; in my university, Utrecht University and especially in my faculty within the university, the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance. We use it to make sure that we have a more contemporary understanding of how the university functions in relation to society. To be more precise, we use it as a key concept to link both academic education and research to society, to societal practices, partners, themes, issues, problems, etc. We do not say ‘we have impacts which occur alongside our education and research’; no, we have education and research as the core of our university, but we explicitly want to relate this education and research to society.