Chair: Veronika Lassl
Vice Chair: Severin Rohrer
Secretary: Piet Pankratz
Vice Secretary: Sarah Ulmer
Treasurer: Eva Hijlkema
Invoice Controller: Gex Blumer
General Board Members: Cheyenne Brock, Eric Wallace
What is the Forum Board?
There is a set of positions that a “Verein” (i.e. the type of legal entity that the Forum is) must fill. These are the chair, the secretary and the treasurer. Together with the vice-chair and the vice-secretary they form the core of the board. All of these positions should definitely be filled during the general assembly. In addition to this, we’ve traditionally filled 3-4 further positions which together with the core board positions make up the “extended board” of the Forum.
The position descriptions below are meant to give rough ideas, but how many tasks and which ones each person ends up taking on can be negotiated among the board. In reality, the tasks aren’t that neatly divided up. Realistically, each board member ends up somehow involved with everything the board does.
In the summer semester 2025, the board has taken to meeting monthly and we can recommend keeping this up as it has been very helpful. Ideally, a board member can be present for all meetings year-round and in person (but you can also join via Zoom). If you are considering joining the board, please keep this in mind.
Required positions (“core board”):
Chair:
Legally, the chair is the person in charge of registering the new board with the police to update the “Vereinsregisterauszug” and to organize the yearly general assembly. Furthermore, the chair has signatory rights for the Forum bank account (together with the treasurer). All other tasks can be delegated to other board members, but these are legally tied to the chair position.
Standard tasks the chair has traditionally taken on are: 1) moderating the mailing-list; 2) sending out the weekly E-Mails; 3) chairing the weekly discussion sessions. These can also be passed on to others.
What other activities are there for the chair to coordinate? One job is to ensure the Forum has adequate financial resources (via membership fees and additional funding from the ÖH IG Phil) for its year-round events. This is something the chair does in collaboration with the treasurer. The biggest job for the chair is organizing the yearly conference. This means inviting keynote speakers, writing financial applications, putting out calls for abstracts, selecting graduate speakers, putting together the conference program and setting up a team that will be onsite during the conference days.
Other jobs for the chair is making sure that everything for year-round events runs smoothly (e.g. that rooms are booked, that funding is covered, that the event is advertised, etc.) and coordinating how the Forum makes itself visible in the institute (e.g. by showing up physically in lectures and advertising the Forum and instructing the secretary and vice-secretary on how the Forum’s presence online is to be run).
Vice-Chair
The vice-chair supports chair as needed and to the extent they are able to. This could mean jumping in to chair weekly discussion sessions, taking over the coordination of a smaller event, taking over communication with keynote speakers, etc. The vice-chair becomes acting chair if the chair-person should put down their position before the end of their term.
Secretary
The secretary is legally obligated to write protocols for general assemblies. Beyond that, the secretary has also typically been the person to manage the online presence of the Forum (e.g. on social media and the website). They usually share this responsibility with the vice-secretary. They assist with other tasks where possible.
Vice-Secretary
Assists the secretary with managing the online presence of the Forum and other tasks where possible.
Treasurer
Together with the chair, the treasurer sets up a financial plan for the year and the yearly conference and works on securing the requisite funding. In addition, the treasurer is legally required to present the Forum’s finances in a yearly “Kostenaufstellung” (an overview of the Forum’s income and expenses) and to keep copies of all the Forum’s receipts. As an optional activity, the treasurer researches ways to improve the Forum’s financial situation (e.g. by looking for bank accounts that offer better terms for a “Verein”, looking for (more) entities that might be willing to support us financially).
Optional Positions: (“Extended board”)
Invoice-Controller
This role can also be fulfilled by another board member but it legally cannot be the treasurer themselves. The legal role is to look over the treasurer’s “Kostenaufstellung” before they present it to the Forum members and to give signed confirmation that the calculations are correct and complete.
Topic adviser
In the past it has been helpful to make the person whose topic proposal was chosen a board member. This is because they are key to evaluating whether the board’s decisions are sensible from a topical point of view. This person is ideally well-read on the year’s topic and helps with: finding and contacting prospective keynotes, putting together the year’s reading schedule and crafting event descriptions. However, this job can also be fulfilled by other board members.
The CEU-Connection
We, the Forum, want to bring students from the University of Vienna and the CEU closer together. In order for that to happen, the students at CEU must know that the Forum exists. While we could try to infiltrate CEU from outside, it may be easier to do so from the inside. This person should be familiar with the process of advertising events via CEU’s internal mailinglists and willing to advertise the Forum through them (and perhaps put up some Forum posters). Ideally, this person is also willing to advertise the Forum in person at a handful of suitable events (e.g. lectures attended by the whole student body). It would also be useful for this person to keep track of events & developments taking place at CEU, insofar as they have the potential to lead to more exchange and collaboration between the student bodies of both universities.
General Board Member
In addition to the positions outlined above, we appreciate having one extra pair of hands on board. This would be someone who could jump in and help when individual board members are overwhelmed and would like to delegate a task. They would also keep an eye out for small things that the board may be losing sight of (e.g. reminding members to pay membership fees). If they wanted to, they could help with organizing extra social events for the Forum beyond the weekly discussion sessions (e.g. the christmas party).
Other ways to get engaged:
We are always looking for people who are willing to help with organizing WFAP events. This could be things like shopping for the christmas party, organizing a writing week or a workshop. Past workshops have covered both study-related topics (e.g. “How to apply to a PhD program”) and philosophical topics (e.g. Irmena Tsankova’s workshop on disjunctivism, internal work-in-progress workshops, open-sessions etc.).
We are also open for new event ideas (e.g. philosophical movie nights). If you have an idea for an event you want to organize, you can get in touch with the board for guidance and if possible, financial support. We welcome it if anyone is willing to organize more social events where students can get together for fun activities or events covering political topics (e.g., a round-table discussion on the concerns of an underrepresented group in philosophy).
Lastly, we are open to letting more Forum members be involved in chairing the discussion sessions. If you enjoy doing this kind of thing or just want to try your hand at it, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the chair.