Abstract
Dr Fabienne Maron passed away at the end of 2024, after having served as the Executive Secretary of the European Group for Public Administration (EGPA) for nearly a quarter of a century, as well as in other roles at the International Institute of Administrative sciences (IIAS), which she joined at the debut of the millennium. She has been hugely missed since, and she has been fondly remembered: beautiful texts of commemorations have appeared that witness her impressive contribution to the life of the European community of public administration and the administrative sciences worldwide.
As PPA editors, we deemed it appropriate to pause and wait before publishing this In Memoriam, to better be able to gauge the impact of such loss and remember Fabienne through a better appreciation of her lasting legacy. This is why we considered to publish this obituary in the last issue of this year 2025, the first without Fabienne: we are only now as public administration community, in Europe especially but also well beyond it, starting to collectively come to the realisation of the major impact of her legacy – and with it to also realise how much Fabienne is being missed.
Fabienne performed a pivotal role for the European administrative sciences. A profound restructure of the learned societies at the service of the public administration community in Europe is under way at the time this In Memoriam is being written: it is testament to the pivotal role Fabienne played in the formation and consolidation of a true European public administration community; her commitment and dedication, her skills at the service of public administration did play a pivotal role in consolidating an equilibrium in the collective representation of the scholarly public administration community in Europe and beyond.
Dr Fabienne Maron – a PhD from UC Louvain – has been a very kind and gentle person, sensitive to everyone’s needs and always so impeccably well-behaved and professional, even under the most intense pressure and testing circumstances. Her loyalty and dedication to IIAS and to EGPA, and through these institutions to the entire public administration community, has been steadfast and admirable. Her ingenuity and creativity enabled her to cope with problems that would have proved insurmountable even for the most skilled professional. She was always striving to attain excellence (a word at times used without much thought in academic milieux) in every task she performed, and most notably in organising conferences of the highest level.
She was also extremely generous with her time and skills, always sharing her knowledge with everyone, and she did so irrespective of the academic standings and status of the people she encountered. Interns, students, early career researchers, as well as seasoned academics: all would always find in Fabienne guidance, support, a helping hand – always.
Whatever she engaged in, she did it with a deep sense of duty coupled with a profound serenity, notwithstanding the profound pressure she found herself under on many occasions. And there was no “crisis” she could not adapt to, tame, and get everyone through, without ever putting excessive pressure on anyone else – other than herself: she never tried to spare herself efforts and at times she made real personal sacrifices to keep things going for the public administration community. For Fabienne, the cause of the administrative sciences and the progress of public administration in Europe and the world was something she devoted herself to entirely, without respite. And yet at the same time she was always able of displaying a deep sense of humour, making every moment spent with her agreeable for everyone, truly enabling a “community” of people to form, in Europe and beyond – a community of which Fabienne was the institutional memory.
The ongoing reconfiguration of learned societies in the field of public administration in Europe, a process which has occurred with dramatic intensity since Fabienne passed away, is testament to how pivotal her role and personality has been in the field, and how active her presence was to be able to keep different forces in equilibrium. Public administration is the field to which she devoted herself so deeply over the quarter of a century since the year 2000 – we like to think, indeed we are sure, the legacy of Fabienne will be part and parcel of the field of public administration for the next three quarters of this turbulent 21st century.
