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Chiara Duse
Technical and administrative staff - Administrative-Accounting Office

What do you do in your job at the department?
I mainly deal with contracts (funding from government agencies and private companies) and management of departmental bodies.

Tell us about yourself and how you got here at Ca' Foscari, and in the department where you work.
My work experience began as a SEN teacher thanks to a certificate as a LIS (Italian Sign Language) interpreter. My 'official' university career, however, was in law, a great passion of mine since high school (I graduated in Law). After teaching, which I gave up for family-related issues, I worked for a while at the Veneto Region, where I dealt with structural funds, and then I worked as a management secretary at a company in the VEGA Science and Technology Park until the public competition for administrative officer led me to the Department of Chemistry and now to the Department of Molecular Sciences and Nanosystems.

Tell us something about your job that you feel has brought some benefit, even the smallest, to the community.
I am referring to the ‘department community’, of course, where I live. There is no legal expert in the Department other than me. I feel useful whenever I can solve matters related to law, form, and the various regulations applicable to us without having to call on the central offices and thus shorten the time it takes.

How has your approach to your job changed during the pandemic, which aspects have improved and which have worsened? Do you think that remote work has increased your productivity or not?
Remote work has family-related advantages of course. I have three children, a husband, a house to manage, as well as my job: it's easy to see that working from home while maintaining global control is organisationally easier (especially when there is remote schooling). Also, the advantage of doing it in a cosy environment, without the distractions of the office (e.g. a distracting phone call from a colleague) allows you to 'produce' more and faster.
The other side of the coin, however, is the lack of interpersonal relationships, of contact with co-workers (you even miss the exchange of a smile), of the certainty of being there for others, which day after day undermines a balance that, since the beginning of the pandemic, has proved difficult to maintain.

If you had to describe the Department with an image, what would you compare it to?
I would compare it to a feather-duster worm, an interesting little animal...

Last update: 27/02/2024