Inauguration of New Professors and Conferment of Doctoral Degrees, 2022

Rectores, promotores, promovendi and installandi, medalist and award winners, honourable guests!

A warm welcome to Stockholm University’s inauguration and conferment ceremony for 2022!

Today, our focus is on research, your research. A university is never more than its teachers and researchers. Today we celebrate all those who have helped make Stockholm University what it is. Our jubilee doctors, who received their doctorates fifty years ago and have often continued their research, our honorary doctors, who have contributed to the University’s activities through research or in other ways, our new professors, who are now responsible for leading research and education in the future, and our new doctors who, through their theses, have helped move the frontiers of research forward.

These are times of unrest, which is precisely why our mission as a university becomes particularly important: to develop and further scientific knowledge through long-term strategies and critical thinking, to openly share research results and research data, in order to promote transparency and reproducibility. The pandemic gave us a forceful reminder of the great importance of science in society, when already existing basic research gave us a vaccine in record time. A large number of researchers also switched to studying many of the unanswered questions we were facing and which still pose a future challenge for us. The ongoing war in Ukraine pinpoints the importance of science in many ways; security and conflict research, ethics of war and peace and not least knowledge of languages, culture and history are important building blocks to provide relevant data and interpret development in our time. However, even here, the answers are sometimes contradictory – science rarely gives simple answers.

Two weeks ago I was in Bologna, where I was proud and happy to be able to sign, with a large number of university presidents from around the world, the Magna Charta Universitatum 2020, an addition to the original agreement from 1988, which was signed by Inge Jonsson on behalf of Stockholm University. The amended Magna Charta-document still emphasises the academic core values, autonomy and academic freedom, but it also underlines the responsibility of the universities and the response which is necessary in order to meet societal challenges. Stockholm University has identified knowledge, enlightenment and the search for truth as its particular core values.
In times of unrest, when democracy is pushed back in a number of countries, and academic freedom as well as freedom of speech are under threat in many places, these core values are more important than ever.

As you know, we have also have had elections in Sweden. From a university perspective it must be said that the election campaign was deplorable. Research-based knowledge was as good as absent from the political debate, not to mention the actual research questions, which are rarely election issues. But this time it was even worse: both climate and pandemic seemed to have vanished when the politicians outdid each other in various statements which were often contrary to scientifically proven knowledge. It is too early to say anything about a new government. But it has a lot to live up to if it wants to take Sweden’s ambitions as a leading knowledge nation seriously. Two years from now, it is time for the next research bill. It is high time for us to come together to formulate and start pursuing those issues which we find particularly important from the perspective of the universities: free basic research and secured direct government funding for research, research infrastructure, particularly e-infrastructure, and increased support for the transition to open science, just to name a few.

The academic year 2021-22 was in many ways a successful year for Stockholm University which is among the top universities in Sweden in terms of citation impact. This is also confirmed by the two most recent research barometers published by the Swedish Research Council. On the Shanghai Ranking of individual subjects, we are among the top universities in the world in ten or so subjects: number sixteen in the world in geography and number nineteen in atmospheric science, with top positions also in geoscience, oceanography, environmental science and technology, economics, chemistry, sociology and education.

We were also very successful in terms of external funding. From the Swedish Research Council, the University received a total of more than SEK 600 million, to be compared with about SEK 400 million the previous year. Five projects for existing research infrastructure were also granted from the Swedish Research Council, as well as another three projects where the University is a partner. One Research Council Professorship was granted to Stockholm University, and another one to an affiliated professor. From the European Research Council, the University received four Starting Grants, two Consolidator Grants and what eventually became two Advanced Grants.

Through a substantial commitment from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, WISE, the Wallenberg Initiative on Material Science for Sustainability, where Stockholm University is one of six participating universities, there are great opportunities for important recruitments, both of more senior researchers, some thirty postdoctors and an equal number of doctoral students – and more. This gives marvellous opportunities, not least for collaboration with the other major research universities which are part of the effort. From KAW, the University also received funding to recruit a prominent mathematics researcher. In addition to this, a very generous private donation from Sverker Lerheden of SEK 100 million to the Department of Mathematics has given the subject of mathematics at the University a substantial and welcome reinforcement. Polar research at the University will also receive a considerable reinforcement thanks to Britt-Louise Theglander’s donation of her entire estate for this purpose. These private, conditionless donations to the needs of research in a specific area are of the greatest importance, especially in times when the funding of free basic research is limited.

In the course of the year, the Centre for Studies in Indo-European Language and Culture was established at the University with a basis in a research programme from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The Hans Blix Centre for the History of International Relations could finally be officially inaugurated, having started its activities during the pandemic.

Stockholm Trio has also, in connection with its official pre-conference of the Stockholm +50 conference, renewed their common collaboration agreement with the University of Tokyo, as one of their especially chosen global partners. After some ten years of a well- functioning informal partnership, Stockholm University has now also signed a strategic partnership agreement with the University of Helsinki. One cornerstone in this collaboration concerns the Baltic Sea through Baltic Bridge, the multiannual collaboration between Askö laboratory of the Stockholm University Baltic Sea Centre and Tvärminne Zoological Station of the University of Helsinki. This collaboration has now also been extended to include atmospheric science in the Coast Clim initiative.
This summer, new funding from the EU Commission to the European Universities initiative meant that CIVIS was now also granted funding for the next four years. Stockholm University has been a member of CIVIS ever since the pilot round of this original university alliance. Stockholm University is responsible for the so-called hubs, where the universities cooperate around five prioritised societal challenges, and is host for the hub Climate, Energy and Environment.

I should also like to mention some collaboration initiatives from the past academic year. Bildningspodden (The Education Pod), an initiative from the Faculty of Humanities which has turned into one of Sweden’s most popular history and research pods, has relaunched both the news magazine Studio Anekdot and the classics pod Verket.
Stockholm University has also been commissioned by the Government to host a recurring democracy fair for high school students, and this has already been done successfully on several occasions. Last but not least, I should like to mention initiatives which have taken place following the invasion of Ukraine, where Stockholm University has been able to welcome a number of researchers. During the summer, we were also given the honour of organising the Ukrainian national university aptitude test for participants who are in Sweden. Rarely has an initiative within the University’s public service responsibilities felt more ponderus and meaningful.

When the subject of the University’s cooperation efforts for society comes up, I usually make a particular point of stressing the fact that we offer higher education to new generations. Therefore, I am particularly happy that the University also rewards outstanding teaching achievements during its inauguration and conferment ceremony – this is of high symbolic significance. It is not by accident that our positions as associate senior lecturer, senior lecturer and professor are called teaching positions: research and higher education belong together. What would our scientific accomplishments be unless they were disseminated by knowledgeable and dedicated teachers – and then in turn by students who have made this knowledge their own? Today we also have a medalist who, in a very special way, has contributed to furthering the quality of our education and for whose efforts the whole University has reasons to be very grateful.

Installandi and promovendi, you have every reason to be proud today. This pride is, of course, linked to your own research and its results, but also to the research environment where you were active, or still are. It is my hope that our prominent jubilee doctors, many of whom are still active researchers, can also feel joy over their Alma Mater today. This Alma Mater which my predecessor Staffan Helmfrid, in his own jubilee doctor speech, once called “the freest of all free universities”. Today, I wish to extend my warm congratulations to you all on your well-deserved success!

Dixi.