Here at the University, we have started the new year by discussing the Bill within the University Management, with the faculty managements in the Vice-Chancellor’s Management Council and at the meeting last week with the heads of department. The Bill was also the main theme of last week’s annual dialogue seminar, which is arranged by the Association of Swedish Higher Education Institutions (SUHF) and brings together HEIs and research funding bodies.
I can sum up the work and discussions that have taken place in the first few weeks as follows: researchers, higher education institutions and funding bodies will have a lot to do and it is urgent – but I also see that the work has started strongly, not least here at the University, at the faculties and between faculties. Most urgent is the preparation and planning for the call for applications regarding the new strategic research areas (SRAs), which as announced will take place this year to be included in the 2027 budget. One of the first things we are now doing internally at the University is to try to create a comprehensible timeline that includes the various initiatives from the Bill and that can form a basis for the planning and the resources that will be needed. Several calls for applications will coincide and with this I can see a risk for an exceptionally high workload for individual researchers that may apply at both centres of excellence and clusters of excellence for groundbreaking technologies and SRAs.
There are many fantastic opportunities in the Bill. Not least, it injects new funding into the system and even though we should not celebrate too early, because we have not yet seen the result in the account, Lund University is in a good position to share in the new funding. It will be a very interesting year for the faculties and for the University Management with the onus on consolidating and thinking about creating strong environments and strong applications that present both depth and breadth. And it will also be interesting to see how research funding bodies will handle interdisciplinary applications concerning, for example, groundbreaking technologies. It has proved difficult in the past for the Swedish Research Council to evaluate interdisciplinarity in initiatives for excellence due to the Council’s structure, which leads to evaluations by bodies for specific subject areas. However, removing the subject areas is not an option as I see it – the various disciplines are important and needed – but applications for interdisciplinarity need to be handled in a different way than before, in order to actually lead to interdisciplinarity.
The Swedish Research Council and Vinnova will also need to cooperate to a greater extent on innovation, an area in which frameworks are provided in the Bill but not as yet in any great detail. However, as time is short, I don’t think we will see the broad national hearings that we are used to.
I also think it will be important for the University to develop in the long term and sustainably. There are challenges associated with too much success in securing grants. Co-funding is one such challenge. Another is that allowing current excellent environments to grow considerably in the moment may have considerable consequences for subsequent generations, for example the recruitment stress that can arise when senior researchers retire. I also think that it is challenging to determine what may be groundbreaking and excellent in a few years. To highlight what is currently excellent and groundbreaking risks leading to preservation of the already known rather than finding what is truly original.
So, my year has started with a large measure of delight combined with a few headaches and I believe that feeling is shared by quite a few others at Lund University and in the higher education sector.
/Erik
