A tribute to Prof. Dr. Maria Ioannis Baganha
In Memoriam Maria Baganha
On Sunday morning June 28, 2009 Maria Baganha passed away. She had been ill for some time and has fought her illness with all her strength and optimism. That made her come back unexpectedly last year to the work that she saw as a mission, but, regrettably, this come back was only temporary.
Maria Baganha has been a leading figure in the field of migration studies: within the University of Coimbra where she established and headed a special unit in the field; in Portugal as a whole, where she played a crucial role in initiating coordinated action of researchers and policymakers in the field; and in Europe, particularly through her central role within IMISCOE, the Network of Excellence on Immigration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe.
Within IMISCOE Maria Baganha has had a crucial place and she has carried its development right from the beginning. She has been Chair of the Board of Directors from its beginning in April 2004 and was also the chosen Chair of the IMISCOE Research Network that carries the work through after the EU-funded Network of Excellence. She was also member of the Editorial Board of the IMISCOE Publication Series where she used her position to encourage researchers on the one hand, and to evaluate the quality of their work on the other. Apart from these official functions within IMISCOE, she was initiator of and participant in many joint research projects.
IMISCOE owes a lot to Maria Baganha. Firstly, because of her outstanding scientific and organisational contributions, but we will also miss her irreplaceable character and ways of doing things: energetic, cheerfully, with a good feeling for agreeable forms of irony including self-relativation, combined with sharp analysis of what quality is.
IMISCOE will miss her, and as the coordinator of IMISCOE, I personally will miss her dearly.
Rinus Penninx
Coordinator IMISCOE
Maria Baganha's death is a terrible loss for all those who have known her and worked with her. Maria has trained several generations of students and researchers and has done more than any other scholar to put Portugal on the map of European migration studies. I was proud and happy to have Maria as a partner in a project comparing citizenship regimes in Europe. She was not only an exemplary scholar with an open mind for different disciplines and perspectives. She was also a great organizer who put together successful research teams and networks. Finally, Maria was also a very warm person whom inspired trust in all those who worked with her. I will miss her very much.
Rainer Bauböck
Cluster Leader B3/ Member of the IMISCOE Board of Directors
European University Institute
I've known Maria Baganha personally since 1992. I met her for the first time in Lisbon at the Intercongress Meeting of the Research Committee 31 "Sociology of Migration" of the International Sociologicla Association. At the time, she was involved in European research activities dealing with the labour market position of immigrants in Southern Europe, one of her favourite topics. I was impressed by the sharpness of her analysis and comments as well as by her human qualities. Since then, our paths crossed many times all over Europe and my first impressions were always positively confirmed. We are losing a top-quality colleague in our field but what is more important, we are above all losing a unique personality that animated the IMISCOE network with a huge enthusiasm. And for many of us, we are losing an excellent friend.
Marco Martiniello
Member of the Executive Board
Member of the Editorial Committee
Member of the Board of Directors
On behalf of all Sussex colleagues, I was very sorry to hear of the passing away of our colleague and friend, Maria Baganha. Maria was one of those rare people who was able to combine three things in her academic work: an international reputation in her field of migration studies, a great sense of duty and service to her profession and her colleagues, and a wonderful sense of fun and enjoyment in her work and academic social contacts. She will be sorely missed, and fondly remembered.
Russell King, Sussex Centre for Migration Research
Cluster Leader C8
Member of the IMISCOE Board of Directors
On behalf of the editorial team of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS), I would like to extend sincere condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Maria Ioannis Baganha. Her untimely death will be a great loss to all who knew and loved her, but she also leaves us with wonderful memories of a warm, funny, intelligent and caring person. Maria had been a member of the JEMS Editorial board since January 2000; always diligent in promoting the journal to colleagues and students alike, she was also always an enthusiastic and constructive referee. Gone she may be, but she is most certainly not forgotten!
Jenny Money
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS)
Sussex Centre for Migration Research
There is not much to add to what has been said by Rinus, Rainer and the others. We, i.e. especially Holger Kolb and I, just want to stress that Maria has been a most wonderful project leader we had the privilege to work with. She combined scientific competence with her human mind and sense of humour in a way that opened the space for open discussions and dissent and allowed turning this into a productive mode of doing research.
Yes, she has been a great colleague and an outstanding scholar. We are sure that all our colleagues from IMIS subscribe to this.
I want to add personally: We should not forget that Maria has also been a human being who was not just wonderful but who has been hit during her last years by a number of personal catastrophes starting with the death of close relatives affecting her emotionally deeply and ending with her final disease which made her pass away. It makes me very sad that I may have missed to answer her friendship adequately during these difficult times.
Michael Bommes,
Cluster Leader B4
Member of the Board of Directors
IMIS,
University of Osnabrück
The first time I met with Maria Baganha was during an International Metropolis conference many years back. She then displayed a combination of scientific drive, an ability to put things in perspective, and a great sense of humor. That was Maria all over. When I got familiar with her academic work, I realized what an interesting scholar she was. The second time I met with her was also during an International Metropolis conference. She stood on an escalator with a cigarette in her hand and with the appearance of a diva. Maria always made a strong presence. It is sad that we will no longer be able to enjoy her presence. Maria was a good scholar, a pleasant colleague and wonderful company.
Jan Rath
Member of the Board of Directors
Director of the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies (IMES) of the University of Amsterdam
European Chair of International Metropolis
The Centre of Migration Research of University of Warsaw wants to expressdeepest sympathy to the family, friends and IMISCOE collaborators of professor Maria Baghanha who recently passed away. We feel great loss of her. We will miss her expertise in migration research, warmth, energy and frienship.
On behalf of the team of CMR,
Prof. Marek Okolski
Member of the Board of Directors
Member of the Executive Board
Maria Baganha was one of the pioneers of the Research Programme in Social Sciences and Humanities of the European Commission. She has actively participated to the programme since its beginning in 1994 with the 4th Framework Programme. Through the years, she has coordinated several European research projects and also acted as an evaluator. Maria has trained a whole generation of researchers in European comparative studies, she has been one of the creative engine of IMISCOE and an incredible support for Rinus Penninx in his endeaveur to set up the Network. With her energy, passion and optimisme she has created a fantastic working atmosphere throughout this adventure. We will all miss her comptence, her energy and her sense of humor.
On behalf of the European Commission we would like to express our sincere condolences to the family and to all the members of IMISCOE. Her smile will remain in our mind.
Giulia Amaducci, Project Officer of IMISCOE, European Commission, DG Research
Fadila Boughanemi, European Commission, DG Research
Virginia Vitorino, European Commission, DG Research
I was sorry to learn that Maria Baganha passed away. Although I did not have research collaboration with Maria I appreciated her leadership as chair of a number of board of directors meetings and of plenary sessions at annual conferences. I have fond memories of the first annual conference in Coimbra which she hosted and which lay the ground for future work. I propose that the annual meeting in Stockholm this year will be dedicated to her memory.
Charles Westin
Member of the Board of Directors
Cluster Leader C7
CEIFO
Before meeting Maria, her fame already reached us. A colleague who returned from a Metropolis Conference in Oslo was impressed by the sharpness of her mind and the warmth of her personality. So, when we were aiming at establishing an international consortium for submitting a common research project, we asked her to collaborate: she reacted immediately positive, and offered us full support during the whole project. This was the first of several encounters which introduced us to a wonderful person and outstanding scholar. She was a character, indeed, animated by a determination to understand and change. She was also a witness of those great political and social transformations and accomplishments Southern Europe experienced in the last four decades.
Never I will forget how she described with a twinkle in her eyes her adventures during the Revolution of the Carnations at our last dinner in Bilbao. With Maria, an excellent observer of our times has gone that no one can replace.
Gianni D'Amato
Member of the Board of Directors
SFM, University of Neuchâtel
Among the many charges she took upon her, Maria Baganha was member of the IMISCOE Editorial Committee from the very establishment of the group. It is in this capacity that I had the chance to get to know her more closely. I knew of her illness last year but her committed and dynamic comeback last year in Bilbao had obliterated the fears. The news of her passing deeply affected me.
She was a dedicated person, ready to invest time and energy in the Committee activity, fully aware of the crucial service function of it for the whole IMISCOE scholarly community. She participated vividly in the debates and made the Committee profit from her experience as evaluator, thus contributing to establish the quality of the IMISCOE AUP series. I will keep a fond memory of her competence in migration research as well as of her charming personality.
Rosita Fibbi
On behalf of the IMISCOE Editorial Committee
Maria was a wonderful person: sharp, bright, a good sense of humour, academically sound and always in for co-operation. I got to know Maria quite well when we both served on the COST A2 Action on Migration in the early 1990s, possibily one of the predecessors of the current, much more sophisticated IMISCOE Network. The endless Brussels meetings without a
clear objective annoyed both her and me, and her good spirit helped us
through that ordeal. She could just as well have withdrawn, but that was not her way of dealing with these things. And indeed, thanks to her we managed to make some sense out of nonsense. That was typically Maria: very dedicated, most reliable and always optimistic. In this spirit we continued our co-operation in the 'Pemint' project, which she
co-ordinated and in which she was able to show us the best of her
academic abilities - again, always with a good sense of humour and strongly dedicated to all colleagues involved, from the most junior PhD student to the most senior professor. This was Maria - even when I last spoke to her a month ago, she was still optimistic. Sadly, luck was not on her side this time. We will miss her very much, but we will always remember her joyful and bright personality as well as her valuable contributions to the study of migration, particularly in Southern Europe.
May she rest in peace.
Han Entzinger
Member of the IMISCOE Board of Directors
Erasmus University Rotterdam
It is always difficult to accept the passing away of colleagues and people with whom you have shared experiences and moments of life, but sometimes one has the feeling that it comes too early and that the person has special characteristics and is going to be missed particularly. This was the case of Maria.
All the IMISCOE colleagues from Deusto join us in sending this note of condolence. We feel that Maria, beyond her intellectual capacity, was a person, very sensitive to the needs of others and particularly ready to be at the side of the most vulnerable. It is this characteristic that we would like to emphasise, we think this was a sign of the calibre of the person she was and what mattered to her in life. We are very thankful to have had the opportunity of sharing some time with her in IMISCOE.
Marisa Setien and Julia González
Members of the IMISCOE Board of Directors
Deusto
Prof. Dr. Maria Baganha was former member of the Metropolis International Steering Committee, representing the University of Coimbra from which she played a leading role in the development of migration studies in Portugal. Beginning with her energetic leadership, Portugal has become one of the strongest players in the Metropolis Project. She leaves a legacy of academic excellence and a strong network of scholars, practitioners, and officials in Portugal most evident in Metropolis Portugal and Portugal’s contributions to IMISCOE where she was a Board member and Chair.
I will carry fond memories of Maria with me into the future. She was a builder, a serious scholar, and someone who was great fun to spend time with.
Howard Duncan
Co-chair International Metropolis
Member of the External Advisory Board of IMISCOE
On behalf of Amsterdam University Press, I was very sorry to hear of the passing away of Maria Baganha. I very much enjoyed working with Maria in her function as a member of the Editorial Board of the IMISCOE AUP Books Series. She has made a huge contribution to the quality and reputation of the Series.
Erik van Aert
Publisher Amsterdam University Press (AUP)
