Hilde Van den Bulck is Full Professor of Communication Studies at University of Antwerp, where she teaches and does research in the complementary fields of media policies and structures, focusing on public service media, and of media culture, focusing on mediated communication in celebrity culture. Hilde was Vice Chair and is currently Chair of the Communication Law and Policy section of ECREA.
What are your hobbies outside academia?
I try to pick hobbies that really take my mind off of work. I like getting lost in a novel, I swim and walk (no jogging, I hate jogging) to stay fit, I am a below-average motorbike rider which requires all my concentration and, after a seven-year interval, I’m back to doing stand-up comedy.
How did you start to be involved in stand-up?
I have always been into comedy. Then, about fifteen years ago, I took a workshop series to understand the dynamics of it. At the end, you were expected to do a three-minute routine for a ‘live audience’, which I was adamant not to but the guy running the workshop convinced me. Three years later, I was doing about a gig a week. I gave it up for a while due to work commitments. Then, last fall, I spent some time in NYC and decided to take another workshop, as I liked the challenge of doing it in a foreign language, and ended up back on stage at the Comic Strip (of Seinfeld fame) and now I am back into it.
Are there any similarities between academic work in Communication and stand-up?
Well, you have to invest a lot of time and energy and do a lot of writing and deleting for one good joke to survive, just like coming up with thirty potential research topics but ending up with just one that actually makes sense. Furthermore, as with research output, you’re only as good as your last performance and doing the same old material over and over again will not be tolerated for long before it affects your standing as a professional.
Have you used any material from classes or academic world in stand-up, or vice-versa?
No, since the purpose is to clear my head of work, I avoid jokes about academia and academics. Besides: too easy ☺
Does or did stand-up ever conflict with your academic work? Do you have to chose?
At some point it got picked up on by local media that thought it was ‘unusual’ to have a professor trying to be funny, which made it a little awkward as everybody started asking me about it. I gave it up when I became the Vice-Dean and later Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. I do not care about what people think of me as an individual but I did not want to jeopardize the negotiating position of the Faculty because of people not taking me seriously. Being the only female Dean was enough of a challenge without adding to that. Now that I am no longer in a managerial position, I am happy to go back to it.
How does it, if at all, help you as Professor?
Learning to deal with and to keep the attention of a skeptical and diverse audience has really helped me in teaching large classes in the Bachelor degree. It is also a very good way to forget about work for a bit, which was the whole point of taking it up in the first place. Switching off is probably one of the hardest things in our job, and this is one way that works for me.
Would you recommend your hobby/hobbies to other academics?
Even after all this time, I die a thousand times before I go on stage for a routine of just five minutes. So if you feel like you do not need the extra stress in your life, it is not for you, although I think that is part of doing something so different you forget about work altogether. And the sense of accomplishment when it went well really is the best.
Ana Jorge
