The President’s Speech at the Inauguration and Conferment Ceremony 2023

Mrs Governor of Stockholm county, rectores, promotores, promovendi and installandi, medalist and award winners, honourable guests!

A warm welcome to Stockholm University’s inauguration and conferment ceremony for 2023!

In line with tradition, we are once again here at the City Hall – but this year it is even more festive as it is also the centennial jubilee for this remarkable building. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the City of Stockholm for opening the City Hall on so many important occasions for the citizens of Stockholm, not least Stockholm University’s ceremonies. 

The University’s academic ceremony is always a highlight of the year, when we can take a moment to reflect on the year that has passed, but also take the opportunity to look forwards. It is research that has the seat of honour this evening, but the University’s commission also covers higher education, as well as collaboration, and these also have a given place at the festivities. The main guests at these festivities are of course all of you who are the centre of attention today. Those of you who received your doctorates fifty years ago, and that today are conferred the jubilee doctorate. Those of you who are newly appointed doctors, who have successfully defended your theses and have thereby earned the right to conduct academic teaching. Those of you who are Honorary doctors, who through your research or collaboration have significantly contributed to the development of the University. Those of you who are new Professors, who bear the upmost responsibility to lead Stockholm University’s research and education into the future. We also acknowledge and reward an exceptional collaborative effort with the University’s Large Gold Medal, along with outstanding teaching accomplishments with the Award for Good Teaching.

As stated in Stockholm University’s strategies for 2023-2026, it is the University’s role to be a driving force in the growth of new knowledge through free research and higher education, and in the forming of our future society. The core values that we as a university have identified; knowledge, enlightenment and truth-seeking, along with the fundamental values of autonomy and academic freedom as established in the Magna Charta Universitatum, acquire a particular significance and gravity in these times of societal turbulence when the legitimacy of science is often called into question. At the same time, we find ourselves at a critical moment where research and higher education have significant possibilities to contribute in a decisive way to future development. However, none of this would be possible without our researchers and teachers, and here all of you, today’s protagonists, play a vital role.

Stockholm University can celebrate many achievements from the past year. We have furthered collaboration within Stockholm Trio, where we have inter alia launched a new common master’s programme within Biostatistics and Data Science. We are currently conducting our recurrent Sustainability Forum in collaboration within the Trio.

Last week we were able to, after considerable amounts of hard work and many years of waiting, finally inaugurate our new campus area Albano, a strategic hub in the point of convergence between the city and our three universities, that connects KTH with Stockholm University, and presents fantastic opportunities to develop our research and education.

Collaboration within the European CIVIS alliance, involving eleven universities in Europe and six African partner universities, continues to be strengthened. CIVIS plays a particularly important role within our work related to responsible internationalisation.

Also within this area, Stockholm University has, for the second year, the task of organising the Ukrainian university entrance exam for Ukrainian prospective students in Sweden. In the current situation it is difficult to imagine a more meaningful commission than this.

With regards to international collaboration related to research, I would like to mention that Stockholm University, through the Institute of Solar Physics, and thanks to a specific mandate from the Swedish Government, is one of in total nine institutions in seven countries that have come together to form a Canarian foundation to build the European Solar Telescope, a research infrastructure of great strategic importance for Europe, where we will amongst other things contribute to the instrumentation.

Regarding research in general, I am glad to say that we have once again been successful in attracting external funding. To name a few examples of successful funding applications from the funding agencies where we have been most successful, and the list is usually fairly constant, we have The Swedish Research Council from whom we received three large grants for research environments and two centres of excellence. From Forte we were granted for example funding for two six-year programmes and from Formas a number of project grants. From the Wallenberg Foundations we were awarded significant funding for four research projects with great scientific potential, and from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond a comprehensive funding for programme support, which we also this year received from Mistra. The University has also been awarded significant EU-funding, for inter alia three coordinated collaborative projects within Horizon Europe, and not least regarding excellence, with three ERC Advanced Grants 2022 and four ERC Consolidator Grants in the same year, where Stockholm University was the only Swedish institute of higher education that was awarded funding within the humanities and social sciences, along with two ERC Starting Grants and a further grant this year.
 
2023 has in many ways been an important year in a more general sense for the higher education institutions in Sweden. During the EU presidency in the spring, Sweden negotiated council conclusions regarding transparent, equitable and open access to academic publications, that were adopted in May. On a related subject, during the EU presidency a conference regarding research infrastructure was held in June in Lund that resulted in the so-called Lund declaration about how society can increase the utilisation of research data. Both these documents are central to the future development of open science, an area where Sweden in many ways has a leading position, and where Stockholm University has long been a national driving force. It is important that the global transition towards open science continues, for the sake of transparency, reproducibility and quality in research. Within the EU, preparations are underway for the tenth framework programme for research and innovation. Here, Stockholm University is significantly more prepared than previously thanks to the Stockholm Trio’s Brussels office, that has already submitted input based on our strategic priorities, and where the single most important issue is to protect strong  fundamental research, primarily through ERC. The Brussels office has also raised our visibility within the EU, through for example several seminars during the Swedish presidency on subjects such as preparedness for future global crises and on life sciences, based on our work within SciLifeLab.

On the national level there has, during the past year, there has been criticism of a number of the government’s measures within the field of higher education. Not least the shortened terms of office for board members, the abrupt cut of funding for development research, right in the middle of the application period, or the ambiguity of climate policy expressed in the budget bill. Political quarrels are not appropriate today, but better measures than these are required if Sweden is to live up to its ambitions of being a leading nation of knowledge. We have now, as is praxis, been given the opportunity to provide input to the next research bill, based on the three keywords excellence, internationalisation and innovation, which the Minister for Education Mats Persson has established as his areas of particular priority. This is, as always, a welcome and important opportunity to present the University’s perspective within the context, and we shall of course shoulder this shared responsibility to support the government in shaping a strong and well-balanced research policy for the future. In this time of great challenges related to climate and the environment, geopolitics and security, democracy and freedom of speech – the list could go on – we also see especially clearly the importance of the unique role we have as a university.

Installandi and promovendi, against this backdrop of urgency, it is especially pleasing that to, tonight, be able to focus on celebrating scientific progress, through all of your successful work within the research environments where you are, or have been, active. I would now like to congratulate each and every one of you, and to convey to you both Stockholm University’s and my own personal warmest wishes for the future. 

Dixi.