Aase Pedersen, the union representative for the technical and administrative staff at AU, has no doubt about how to change the fact that researchers, teachers and students all feel that they lack effective administrative support.

“Send the secretaries and technical staff back to the departments,” she says.

At the moment there is too little contact between the two parties, which has a negative impact on the mutual understanding of each other’s needs and working conditions, she believes.

“The administration is an isolated world. It needs to open up – to visit the departments to see what’s actually going on. I’m sure that plenty of administrative staff have never actually visited a department. And I think that’s really unfortunate,” she says.