A Feather in Your Cap: the feather is a prize passed on from one UAntwerp colleague to another in recognition of their efforts or achievements. This month Janus Verrelst (USOS) passes the feather on to Devanshi Saxena (Faculty of Law).
I first got to know Devanshi when she came to Belgium to attend a summer school on law and development. At that time she was studying at the National Law University in Delhi. Her participation in the summer school was possible because of a partnership between her university and UAntwerp.
She must have liked Belgium, because soon after that she started a Master in International and European Law at the University of Ghent. One thing led to another and after working on a few projects in UAntwerp’s Faculty of Law, she is now an assistant in the faculty, a role she combines with her PhD on intellectual property law. Last year she came full circle by supervising a group of Antwerp law students during their legal internships in India, which the National Law University was involved in. During the internships, Devanshi proved to be the ideal bridge between the two cultures.
Whenever I see Devanshi, she’s always cheerful and genuinely interested. She never fails to ask how things are with me and my family. She is always there for her colleagues and gets involved in finding constructive solutions. She can make her point in a reasoned, eloquent and nuanced way, either in English or Dutch. She is driven by justice and stands out for her commitment to realising a more sustainable and inclusive university. Anyone who knows Devanshi understands that while a university has to think global, it also has to act local.