The first time she came to Lund, Rafah Barhoum only stayed for a couple of months. It was 2011 and she was an Erasmus Mundus scholar and taught Arabic. She returned home to Syria, but the war soon drove her back. Now Rafah Barhoum has come to Lund to stay.
Everything from practical problems such as where to locate a suddenly much larger research team to how to make the terms of employment so good that you don’t lose your most competent colleagues to the private sector – these are the questions buzzing around the mind of a newly appointed future research leader.
LUM has met two of the four young researchers at LU who have received SEK 10 million each from the Foundation for Strategic Research, SSF, within the framework of the “Future Research Leaders” programme. Meet chemist Mikael Lund and medic Johan Jakobsson.
Success with grant applications leads to problems of an unexpected although pleasant kind. If your research team is almost doubled in size, where are all your colleagues supposed to work? And how are they to get access to laboratory equipment which is already fully booked?
Mikael Lund is a chemist who doesn’t wear a lab coat. Instead, his research involves computer models of atoms and molecules. Being named a Future Research Leader means both freedom and new challenges.
Nowadays, the ability to write computer code is almost as fundamental as writing and arithmetic. Björn Regnell is passionate about getting programming onto school timetables, preferably from the very start.
It isn’t difficult, takes up very little space, and is healthy, fun, tasty and social!
Sustainable urban farming is a project involving some 20 doctoral students on the area of grass between Gerdahallen and Sölvegatan. From ten raised beds, they have harvested lettuce, carrots, chard, spinach, pumpkins, peas, rhubarb and much more.
A researcher who made invisible female labour visible and had her hypotheses that efficiency thinking in healthcare is neither good nor cheap confirmed when her own husband became ill.
Åsa Burman, like many humanities researchers, struggled alone with her thesis in philosophy. Now she helps other doctoral students to finish on time, and to feel better during the process.
“However, I would never have made this idea a reality without my experiences as a consultant in the private sector and my practical experience of writing a thesis at Berkeley”, she says.
Soon it will be possible to take a ‘ministerial’ degree in Lund. Next autumn, the departments of Philosophy, Political Science and Economics will be starting a Bachelor’s degree in Practical Philosophy, Politics and Economics – PPE. The role model for the programme is a degree given at Oxford University, and it is reputed that several British ministers hold a PPE degree from that institution
Lund University Students’ Unions (LUS) has now received a hearing for its demand that the meetings of the University’s internationalisation committee should be held in English. The meetings will be held in English for a trial period, while minutes will be taken in Swedish to fulfil the legal requirements placed on public authorities.
