Erik van Halewijn named UvA Person of the Year 2019
Cultural Analysis student and founder of StudieHub Erik van Halewijn was named as Folia’s UvA Person of the Year 2019 for his commitment to helping students.
Van Halewijn is the initiator of StudieHub, an initiative in which hem together with four colleagues, provides free homework assistance to students. Taking place twice weekly, StudieHub hopes to bridge the divide separating children whose parents can afford to pay for homework support and those whose cannot.
According to Van Halewijn’s colleagues, he is ‘indispensable,’ ‘very ambitious and ‘a warm person.’ Others have called him ‘the connecting factor,’ ‘remarkably intelligent,’ ‘substantively strong’ and ‘genuinely interested.’ He always asks how you are doing, says a colleague, knows all sixty participants by name and what they want to study.
Four others were given an honourable mention: professor Sennay Ghebreab, Cultural Analysis student Alex Tess Rutten (chairman of the National Student Union), political science teacher Vivienne Matthies-Boon and professor of theoretical high-energy astrophysics Sera Markoff.
