Spotlight on: Kristina Hettne
Every other week, the Thematic DCCs and the Data Steward Interest Group (DSIG) put the spotlight on one research data steward working in the Netherlands to stimulate knowledge exchange and peer-to-peer learning.
What drew you towards the research data management field?
As a bioinformatics and data science researcher I regularly worked on combining and analysing publicly available datasets, which triggered my curiosity about open science and the use of standards and identifiers. Also, I worked in the research group of Barend Mons, one of the minds behind FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data, which of course inspired my thinking and interest. When an opportunity came up at the Centre for Digital Scholarship to work with researchers to make their work open access and FAIR, I decided to make the career switch.
What is an activity/task of your role that you find yourself looking forward to?
I actually like it the most that the role is so varied, but if I have to pick one thing then I would say the personal interaction with researchers. It gives me energy to think along with them to find solutions to their challenges. And I get insight into so many interesting research projects!
What is something unexpected that you can offer help with, if a colleague reaches out to you?
In the past I've worked on making research software code more reproducible and I enjoy discussions around research reproducibility, which led me to become the Leiden University head of node for the Netherlands Reproducibility Network.
What do you think your community of research data professionals is missing?
Good question. I think the community of research data professionals in the Netherlands is well-developed already and that is largely thanks to the local and national community managers, so an award or something else to put these people in the spotlight would be nice.
What is a topic you would want to collaborate on with others?
I'm interested in data reuse. How can we show the value to researchers and what are the barriers for data reuse (research question (and thus data) specificity, data availability, or other things?)
Could you point us to a resource, learning platform, tool or similar which you find useful or inspirational?
I would like to highlight the DCC Spring Training, that celebrated its 5 years anniversary [2025]. In this collaboration we explore actual topics for training for the research data management community (researchers and support staff) and since we offer new workshops every year I would encourage to always check the program when it comes out every early spring!
Get in touch with Kristina: LinkedIn | University Website
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