Interview with Nanne de Vries

NUTRIM attended the farewell speech in honour of the retirement of Nanne de Vries, Professor of Health Promotion on 10 November last. Nanne has been associated with NUTRIM and the Department of Health Promotion for a long time.

We talked to Nanne about how he looks back on that time and his reflections on his work for NUTRIM. We would like to thank Nanne warmly for all his work, his contribution to NUTRIM and the inspiration he constantly displayed, and we wish him all the best and a happy retirement. During his farewell lecture, Nanne de Vries received the Tans medal.

NUTRIM and Nanne

Right from the start of his appointment as Chair of Health Promotion in 2000, Nanne de Vries was involved in NUTRIM, albeit for a small proportion of his research time. The research of the department was labelled both in CAPHRI and NUTRIM, and he thought it would be wise to have a say in both institutes and both institutional councils (Nanne always likes to meddle in all kinds of affairs). More importantly, thematically this was also fitting: quite a few of his research activities concerned nutrition, metabolism, diabetes. Over the years, NUTRIM has put more emphasis on prevention and health promotion, also in the research of other departments, making the participation even more fruitful. Of course, this reflects the more general development in research themes within MUMC+ and Maastricht University.

The productivity and visibility of the NUTRIM research within Health Promotion has gradually increased. As a part of that, Nanne (co-)supervised about 15 PhD-theses in NUTRIM and brought quite a few project grants; the NUTRIM group of course did far more. Nowadays the group in Health Promotion is larger than in the early days and their place more recognized. The cooperation with the CAPHRI staff members has always been intensive, leading to more productivity. Being labelled in different institutes has never been a barrier to working together.

Nanne has always been active in thinking about scientific and administrative developments. In times of financial hardship and necessary budget cuts, he, together with the then director of the institute, developed a system for decentralized contributions. His involvement and commitment has been expressed as him (meddling in everything…) being a prompter to the management team.

Tans medal

During his farewell lecture, Professor of Health Promotion Nanne de Vries received the Tanspenning, the highest UM award given to people who have made significant contributions to the development of the university.

Prof Nanne de Vries has been associated with UM since 2000. Besides his professorship and chairmanship of the department of health promotion, he was vice-dean of the FHML faculty for more than nine years.

The Tanspenning is due to Nanne de Vries because of the great contribution he has made to the development and growth of the faculty and university in a very broad field. And above all to the development of the people within those institutes. Exemplary of this are his efforts in further shaping the HR policy for the university and faculty, for the UM Professors' Fund and the UM Dissertation Prize, the latter two both established to appreciate and stimulate academic talent and perseverance.

Over the past decades, Nanne de Vries has participated in programmes and projects for UM that were often also outside his own field, but where his energy and talent were of great value. Through a combination of intellect, perseverance and empathy, Nanne moved not only himself, but also others, and thus the entire UM, UM president Rianne Letschert summed up when presenting the Tans medal.