GU Journal no 2 2012

nnor22| |aapprri li l22001 122

Nothing is impossible Thomas Hedner always looks forward Young Academy of Sweden

Varberg conference

Report

We need more career paths p 4

Voices on visions

The researcher and the interpreter p 10

p 8

UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG

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Vice Chancellor

Many parties want to have influence over the University A s I w rot e in the last number of GU Journalen, work on renewing the University of Gothenburg will continue during 2012. At the end of the year we will not only have a new organisation in place – we will also have launched an entirely new vision and longterm strategy. But it is not just the choices we ourselves make that will affect our future as a university. In spite of all the talk about autonomy, there are many interested parties around us that would like to have a word in our development.

Political decisions give us the framework for our operations but they also have a great effect on resources and how they are used.

I can take the example of the expansion of the programs for medical doctors, nurses, dentists and technicians that is now being planned as a result of greater needs in the community. In practice this means a strong reduction of the total number of slots for students since the financial compensation to more resource-intensive educational programs such as the medical program “costs” three to four times more than the corresponding educational slots in the areas of the humanities and the social sciences, for example.

Unfortunately, it is not clear where the resources for this expansion will come from.

N e w d i r ec ti v e s from the government and continuous new investigations that have effects on our operations do not only make our lives generally disjointed and unpredictable, they also reduce our possibilities for controlling our own operations. This is particularly obvious right now in terms of the teaching programs. Add to that a lack of long-term goals for research and education on the part of the government – it makes it all the more difficult to direct each individual school.

What can we do then to balance the constant demands for change that our sector is continuously exposed to? One way is to create clear and long-term goals that can lead operations when external conditions change and new choices must be made. This is exactly what we are doing in our work with our new long-term strategy for the years 2013-2020.

The strategic work called Vision and Choices has been going on for over a year.

Hundreds of employees as well as persons from other parts of the university sector and representatives from private and public activities have participated in a large number of seminars and workshops in the areas that

A magazine for employees of the Universit y of Gothenburg

April 2012 E d i to r - in C h i e f an d P u b l i s h e r

Allan Eriksson 031 - 786 10 21 allan.eriksson@gu.se E d i to r an d Vi c e P u b l i s h e r

Eva Lundgren 031 - 786 10 81 eva.lundgren@gu.se P h oto g r ap h y an d R e p r o d u c t i o n

Johan Wingborg 031 - 786 29 29 johan.wingborg@gu.se G r ap h i c F o r m an d Layo u t

Anders Eurén 031 - 786 43 81 anders.euren@gu.se T r a s l at i o n

Janet Westerlund A s s i s tan t G r ap h i c F o r m

Björn Eriksson address

Photo: Magnus Gotander

make up the core of the University: education, research and cooperation. The Board of the University has also participated. At this point there is hardly a rock that has not been turned. Beyond giving important room for a new long-term strategy, the discussions have reflected different perspectives and complexities in the different issues. in Varberg, which you can read more about in this issue, there was great consensus about what we want the University of Gothenburg to be in 2020.

Briefly, it is an international and equal university with good quality in research and education and a strong interest in the community.

As the new strategy will form the basis for our different choices and uses of resources, it is important that as many people as possible have participated in the actual realisation of the strategy. During April, five open breakfast meetings will be held in the University’s main building in Vasaparken. You are welcome to discuss the preliminary strategy proposal together with me and the management for the vision work.

Our new common vision and long-term strategy, whose primary goal is to make us more competitive, will be the foundation of the plans for operations that will be developed in the future on the faculty and department levels. A decision on the strategy will be taken by the Board this fall.

At t h e co n fe r e n c e

Pam Fredman

GU Journalen, Göteborgs universitet Box 100, 405 30 Göteborg e-post

gu-journalen@gu.se in t e r n e t

www.gu-journalen.gu.se I SS N

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D e a d l in e f o r manu s c r ip t s

20 April 2012 M at e r ia l

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Thomas Hedner

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Contents

GUJOURNAL 2 | 2012

Vice-chancellor

2 Many parties want to have an influence over the University News

4 There’s no place at the University for young researchers New thesis 6 Maria Gustavson Has investigated how African accountants work 7 The Vice-chancellor sums up the Vision Conference 8 Some voices about the conference 9 Ola Sigurdson thinks there should be a discussion about the university’s idea Report

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10 Interpreter Zul Affan bin Ramil was guest of honour when Anja Franck defended her thesis

The entrepreneur

Profile 12 A pilgrimage made Thomas Hedner change track. The result was an educational program for entrepreneurs

First it gets worse, then it gets better.

Thomas Hedner, professor of pharmacology, is an optimist despite the shutdown of AstraZeneca in Södertälje.

The researcher and the interpreter Anja K Franck interviewed 80 Malaysian women together with interpreter Zul Affan bin Ramli. She invited him to her big celebration to show him her appreciation.

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4 New career paths What will happen to Sweden as a research nation when young and promising researchers can’t get permanent employment?

Editorial Office: Where is the University of Gothenburg going?

T h e U ni v e r s it y of Gothenburg is facing a large reorganisation.

Workshops and seminars have been arranged throughout the spring where employees have discussed important questions such as equality, internationalisation and what role the university should in fact have in society. A final conference was held in February in Varberg. We interviewed a number of participants, and most of them are very satisfied with the event and with its conclusion: that the University has to put effort into being engaged in the community, into quality and into internationalisation. But sociologist

Ove Sernhede was disappointed that the University of Gothenburg, just like other schools, focuses on excellence and ranking lists. “All of Europe is simmering with social and political unrest in the wake of the financial crisis. Thirty years of social development is coming to the end of the road,” is his comment and he feels that it’s time for the University of Gothenburg to take social responsibility.

Ola Sigurdson, Professor of Systematic Theology, also writes in a chronicle about the importance of discussing the role of the university in society. He believes that a greater

understanding of human life in all its different dimensions is among the university’s most important affairs.

And we gain understanding by cultivating our curiosity.

T h e Yo un g Ac a d e m y of Sweden has published proposals for how Sweden can regain a top position as a research nation. This has partly to do with giving young researchers possibilities for development and secure employment. The Academy also thinks that young researchers have to be given the opportunity to formulate problems themselves without feeling that they’re being steered or

forced into pre-determined paths.

We also write about Anja K Franck, who does research on women’s unseen work in Malaysia.

Her thesis wouldn’t have been possible without the help of interpreter Zul Affan bin Ramli, who was present when she defended her thesis.

Please give the editorial office your tips and ideas! We hope you enjoy the issue.

Allan Eriksson & Eva Lundgren

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News

There’s no place for young researchers We need clear career paths now! That’s what the Young Academy of Sweden writes in a proposal for the research bill.

“If we act quickly, we can reverse the ongoing research drain and instead attract promising younger researchers from all over the world,” they write.

But it seems that new rules will take time.

It ’ s c a lle d t e nu r e track and has to do with creating a ready path for the researcher that wants to make a career in the university world. The system exists in the USA as well as many other countries and is based on creating clarity in every step about what the school expects of the researcher: a post doc should be able to go on for example to a four-year assistant lecturer position and then, if he or she lives up to the expectations, be given permanent employment. That isn’t the way it is now,” say the four members of the Young Academy of Sweden from the University of Gothenburg.

“The new university regulations don’t include research assistant positions,” explains Annette Granéli, research assistant in biophysics and one of the main authors of the proposal. “That means among other things that the positions that the Swedish Research Council financed, and that were distributed according to national competition, are gone.

The government must have been thinking right when they wanted to increase the schools’ autonomy and given them the possibility to decide themselves what services they wanted. But the result is that there is no longer room in the system for young researchers.”

that has been outside the country for two years, for example, can hope to get into some project that has recently received funds at his or her own school.

“But you have little opportunity to continue with what you’ve learned and developed during your time as a post doc,” says Henrik Zetterberg, professor of neurochemistry. “That means that we’ve gotten a system that keeps the research that already exists and makes it hard for new thinking to reach out.”

A p o st d o c

It isn’t easy for research leaders to employ people who have recently gained their PhD. “Assume that a financier gives me a three-year funding of three million crowns. It may sound like a lot of money but it only gives me the opportunity to employ one researcher. I have to have a little funding above that to do research myself too,” says Fredrik Bäckhed, associate professor in molecular medicine.

He feels that there wasn’t really anything wrong with the research assistant positions that used to exist.

“The problem was what happened later, that after four years the researcher couldn’t be sure that it would continue, regardless of how good he or she was.”

Above: Annette Granéli Left: Fredrik Bäckhed, Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Åkerman

What places an obstacle to introducing a tenure track system is Sweden’s law on protecting employment (LAS), which means that an employee has the right to employment after two years.

But Johan Åkerman, professor of physics, says that it’s possible to make exceptions to LAS. “Elite soccer players are for example employed in shorter contracts, have unregulated work time and no right to remain when their careers are over. The unions say that LAS is important for security, but in this case the law creates insecurity for young

»That means that we’ve gotten a system that keeps the research that already exists and makes it hard for new thinking to reach out.

Henrik Zetterberg

researchers who don’t have anywhere to go.”

The two years of the current assistant lecturer position are too short to be able to gather merits, according to Fredrik Bäckhed.

“And how do you decide whether a young, promising researcher will in fact go on to

be a future research leader?

Everyone who gets a PhD can’t be research leaders and professors.

There has to be a clear system where those who are best suited get the opportunity to show what they can do. Then we also need to give good possibilities to the majority that won’t be researcher

News

GUJOURNAL 2 | 2012

T h e r e a r e s e v e r a l advantages to a tenure track system, says Annette Granéli.

“It doesn’t have to do only with being clear with the young researchers but also about independence. If the recruitment position has some economic support, the researcher can start his or her own independent line of research. You aren’t as tied to your department and maybe even take the risk of moving to another school. That mobility is low at Swedish universities is a problem that many research evaluators mention.”

She also thinks that a new recruitment system would benefit cross-disciplinary research.

“Cross-discipline has to do with studying different areas and being able to jump between them. The important progress in research may take place at a later stage. If you don’t have a structure that can capture research ideas when they come there’s a risk that they’ll disappear. Somewhere along the road quality gets lost.”

A n ot h e r a dvan tag e is that a clear career path would attract researchers from other countries to Sweden and Gothenburg.

“It’s exactly now that we should be investing in research to reverse the brain drain that’s been going on for a long time,” says Fredrik Bäckhed. “Both Great Britain and the US have been reducing their research funding because of the economic crisis, which makes it possible to attract good researchers from those countries.”

Sweden has a good deal to offer young researchers in their careers, according to Henrik Zetterberg.

“For one thing, there’s already a lot of interesting research of high quality. But it’s also easy to live here. Housing isn’t so expensive and it’s easy to use mass transportation to get to work without having to spend several hours travelling. We also have excellent child care. Sweden is in a golden position right now!”

text Eva Lundgren Photo Johan Wingborg

Stranded negotiations Everyone agrees – the university management, unions and researchers themselves.

Still, a new promotion system is more distant than ever.

N eg otiati o n s between the Swedish Agency for Government Employers and the universities’ three unions (Saco-S, OFR-S and Seko) stranded late last fall over what would come instead now that research assistants are no longer covered in the higher education ordinance. The question is important not least considering that more than a third of the country’s university teachers lack permanent employment.

The Associate of Swedish Higher Education, SUHF, is pushing for the idea of a career system in three steps: assistant lecturer, lecturer and professor. The unions are doing the same. But, after almost a year of negotiations, there still isn’t an agreement.

“The union primarily wants local contracts where you could agree over employments,” explains Martin Selander, chairman of the Saco-S council at GU. “But in a central agreement that employers came to, we couldn’t allow the only employment to be research assistant positions since that system has been misused so much over the years.”

T h e d i ffe r e n c e between a research assistant position and an assistant lecturer position is that, after four years, a research assistant has to look for a new position. The idea behind the assistant lecturer position is instead that the researcher that has fulfilled the clear expectations shall have the right to be considered for a lecturer position without the position having to be advertised publicly.

The University of Gothenburg already has assistant lecturer positions. But these are limited to two years since LAS regulations on time limits for employment then apply.

“It’s a difficult situation that the central negotiations have stranded,” says Vice-chancellor Pam Fredman, who is also chairman of SUHF. “All the parties are aware of the importance of having clear career paths for young researchers. It has to do with the university being able to develop its own research talents and also with attracting good researchers from other schools,

Martin Selander. “They feel like they’re being put aside.

They have no possibility to be considered for a permanent position.”

PHoto: Johan Wingborg

leaders. There are many different kinds of positions in industry, such as technical experts, where good employees who don’t do research can do something. There should be something similar at universities.”

T h e Sw e d i s h Ag e n c y for Government Employers could have delegated the question to the local level but has chosen not to do so. Instead, the Government has said that there will be new attempts to change the higher education ordinance and include a text on assistant lecturer positions.

“That’s a development that worries us,” says Martin Selander. “No other employers can ignore LAS without coming to an agreement with their unions – can the Government do that? We think that the Swedish model with negotiations and collective agreements is much better.”

Pam Fredman also thinks that parties on the labour market have to try to come to an agreement.

Eva Lundgren

Martin Selander, chairman of the Saco-S council at the University of Gothenburg.

»No other employers can ignore LAS without coming to an agreement with their unions – can the Government do that? martin selander

in Sweden or abroad. Moving far from home is a big step that people may not want to take if the circumstances are too uncertain. And a two-year assistant lecturer position is a far too short time for a researcher to establish herself or himself.

Four years is more reasonable.”

“It’s also difficult for the people who have a research assistant position today,” says

facts The University of Gothenburg currently has the following teaching positions: professor, adjunct professor, guest professor, university lecturer, assistant university lecturer, university adjunct, adjunct teacher, guest teacher and post doc.

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New thesis

Dissertation

African culture – what is that?

That was one of many questions that Maria Gustavson wondered about when she was in Namibia and Botswana to investigate how people there work with audits.

“I’d learned that African bureaucracy both is and should be different from Western bureaucracy. But that isn’t the way it is.”

M a r ia Gu stavs o n had two ideas in her head when she travelled to southern Africa to investigate audits there: that the general impression is that public administration doesn’t function very well in Africa, among other things because of widespread corruption, and that developing countries have to have their own way of solving problems and not be forced to adopt Western bureaucratic norms.

“But if audits don’t work the way they do here, then how do they work? That was my question. That I decided Namibia to study audits was because they’re something that exist Botswana everywhere in administration and society, and the function is important for how we see democracy.”

She first travelled to South Africa. A local organisation helped her with recommendations that made it possible for her to be able to study national audits in Namibia and Botswana.

“In all, I was in Africa for about six months and attended courses, conferences and meetings. The accountants were generally welcoming and open.”

Maria Gu stavson Currently: Has recently defended her thesis Auditing the African State.

International Standards and Local Adjustments.

Age: 34 years.

Family: Live-in.

Lives: In central Gothenburg.

Interests: Physical training, preferably skiing, and travel.

I n co n t r a st to Maria Gustavson’s expectations, she found that accountants in Africa were careful to follow the same international standards and transparent way of working that exist in other parts of the world. Neither did they seem to see any problems with adopting Western norms.

“Quite the opposite. They pointed out the advantages of an audit being approximately the same wherever in the world you came. It means for one thing that they can help each other over national boundaries, exchange experiences and also apply for jobs in neighbouring countries.”

A reason why researchers usually think that the public sector in Africa neither can nor should take after our Western way of working

is that African societies much more than ours are seen to be tied to clans or local communities. But even if the local society is important, most people have loyalties to more than just one group, according to Maria Gustavson.

“It was clear that the accountants in southern Africa had a professional pride and saw themselves as a part of the international profession. Their task is to check that tax revenues are used in the right way, and that’s something they take seriously.”

In general, Maria Gustavson’s experiences from Africa have made her think about how we look at nationality and culture.

“What is typically Botswanian? Or, for that matter, what is typically Swedish? It’s something that continuously changes and that Botswanians and Swedes should decide themselves. Of course it’s true that many international organisations are dominated by the West and of course it would be wrong to force officials from Namibia, for example, to work according to our principles. But do trusted and tried methods have to be rejected simply because they come from the West? Accountants in southern Africa don’t think so.”

A f t e r h e r d i s s e r tati o n , Maria landed a position at the Department of Quality of Government. And she recently got research funds for a more theoretical and empirical investigation of the role that audits have in democracy and how they affect different aspects of society.

“But it would also be interesting to study why different scandals, such as the cases of bribery in Gothenburg, can occur, in spite of the fact that we have accountants that are trained to inspect public activities. Don’t they think that it’s their task to sound the alarm, or do they do it but in a way that for some reason doesn’t get attention? Because an audit that doesn’t work is pretty pointless. And if the scandals had taken place in Windhoek instead of Gothenburg, would they have been thought of as something typically African?”

text Eva Lundgren, minna Månson PHOTO Johan Wingborg

News

GUJOURNAL 2 | 2012

Varberg Conference 8-9 February

Margareta Wallin Peterson

A large number of employees have been involved and participated in workshops, seminars and finally in the Varberg Conference in February,” says Pro Vice-chancellor Margareta Wallin Peterson. “We presented the whole work process to the Board on 13–14 March, the direction we’re indicating and the choices we judge have to be made in terms of research, teaching and cooperation.

Carrying out a change in the way we have, where all employees who are interested have been able to participate, is completely unique, say Board members.”

The thought behind the vision work has been to openly discuss the University’s identity today, profile

and image, to develop a vision for 2020 and to map out a direction and choices for reaching the goal. The seminars and workshops that were arranged, which were offered to the entire University, have had more than 1 000 participants and, according to the work environment barometer, 45 per cent of all employees are familiar with Vision 2020.

“We’ll hold a discussion with the Board on 26 April and present a proposal for final discussions on 14 June.

It’s time to take a decision in September and then the large implementation work will start in the fall,” explains Margareta Wallin Peterson.

»We have to become even more international«

What did you think of the conference?

“I think it was extremely good. You came from the conference inspired and with a happy feeling. There was a positive atmosphere. I was impressed with how involved everyone was. It isn’t so often that we get a chance to meet over faculty boundaries and it was extra gratifying that it happened now. It also feels good that our employees can be involved in forming the vision that will be ready in the fall. It’s important to point out that the conference was based on all the workshops and seminars that were held in the fall. There’s a lively and engaged discussion about the University’s big questions.”

Did the conference days live up to your expectations?

“Absolutely. It’s always hard to know in advance how it will be when you gather so many people.

But we got a positive response afterwards. Many people said that the way we worked was creative, interesting and stimulating. It was a kind of working boarding school. By working in small groups, everyone could express themselves. I also felt

that there was room for all kinds of discussion and there was joy in the debate, where new perspectives and different types of questions could be brought up.”

Photo: Magnus Gotander

A vision conference where all manner of questions could be broached.

Room for all kinds of discussion, fun and stimulating. That’s how Vice-chancellor Pam Fredman described the conference days in Varberg that gathered about a hundred participants from all of GU.

The conference was invitation only.

How representative was the choice of participants?

“There was a broad representation of different parts of the University and different categories of employees and students. To be a little self-critical, one could have wished for a somewhat younger mean age. We tried but didn’t really succeed. It was also interesting that everyone emphasised the importance of internationalisation but when we were going to seat ourselves at dinner according to where we were born, it turned out that only seven people were born outside of Sweden.”

Before the conference, the participants were given the task of describing the University of Gothenburg’s particular characteristics in three words. Was it easy to agree about a basic view?

“Yes, I think so. Most of them mentioned the University of Gothenburg as a broad university with high quality in teaching and research, with a great interest in the community, and emphasised the importance of internationalisation. That was maybe not so surprising. But it’s also a reflection of the work we’ve done with Vision 2020.”

Vice-chancellor Pam Fredman

that we need to be even more international to be able to take a place in the global arena. We’re not there yet, so it’s something that we really need to give priority to in the future. Greater mobility on all levels is extremely important. We have to get more international students and send out more students. It has to do with increasing the mobility of teachers, researchers and administrators so that everyone can spend a shorter or longer time at foreign schools. This work gives rings in the water. All these people become ambassadors for the University in the world, which is the best marketing you can get.”

Was there any question that surprised you?

Everyone calls working internationally decisive. Why?

“I was a little surprised perhaps that equality had come so high on the agenda. But I’m very satisfied with that since it’s an important issue that we have to work more with in the future.”

“There’s a greater awareness that we live in a global world and

Allan Eriksson

The current situation The summarising catchwords are community involvement, quality and internationalisation in teaching, research and cooperation. Here are some examples of judgements that form the basis of Vision 2020.

• GU shall be a broad university characterized by diversity and with high quality in its teaching programs.

• GU shall also in the future have a large and varied selection of independent courses. Life-long learning and education are the University’s responsibility.

• It is important to allow strong education environments to develop their research and let strong research environments take responsibility for education.

• GU wants to be an international university. Research is obviously international but and internationalisation of education has to be strengthened.

• GU has a responsibility for broadening the recruitment of students. It must be seen as an important part of the University’s involvement in society.

• GU shall strengthen its research – that is the basis for quality in undergraduate education and in the task of cooperating and is necessary in the future for our competitiveness.

• GU must work more actively to give priority to research, among other things in order to capture new areas and research that lie on the border between established disciplines.

• Cooperation between different disciplines is important for developing research and can also enrich disciplinary research.

• GU shall further develop meeting places, for example building centres that gather competences from different areas in cooperation with society.

• The University shall work strategically with handling knowledge assets in relevant research environments.

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Varberg Conferense

Illustr ation: Kicki Edgren Nyborg

What did you think of the conf It wa s an imp r e s -

to gather 100 persons and it was a good initiative. The same goes for letting everyone talk. But I’m more doubtful about the result of these two days. I felt completely empty afterwards. It was too chopped up, we were forced to take a position to a lot of disparate questions. I was really charged about having a fundamental discussion about the task of the university in Sweden today. Where is our social responsibility? All of Europe is boiling over with social and political unrest after the economic crisis. Thirty years of social development at the end of the road? The university has to be able to approach this new reality.

Instead we go with the flow and become prisoners in the hunt for existing forms of distributing funds, excellence and ranking lists. We didn’t take the chance to create the story and identity that puts the University of Gothen­ burg, its research and education s i v e p roj ec t

in a larger social perspective. The workshops at Vasaparken gave room for this and Varberg didn’t seize that. We do in fact have the freedom to choose our path and we can do this by creating alliances with other universities and colleges that are going in another direction than the general one.

Ove Sernhede, Professor of Social Work I guess I thought

that the conference was pretty exciting.

Both the design and the questions.

Unexpectedly good.

Then it wasn’t a kind of conference that was for us participants. Our task was sooner to give than to get. But the impression was that we contributed to the foundation for the work with Vision 2020.

Björn Rombach, Head of the School of Public Administration

M e e tin g pl ac e s

like the conference in Varberg, where the point was to invite a broad selection of people, are very important.

The benefit was partly to get to talk with colleagues about future strategies and partly to hear a little bit about the frightening and sometimes encouraging ideas that exist here and there.

Unfortunately however the dialogue between the management and operations had to do with that we as teachers and researchers should more be taught the strategic landscape than be given the chance to articulate the problems we have in our operations.

The form was interesting but the questions and alternatives that were formulated were more awkward than sharply analytical.

Marie Demker, Professor of Political Science

A thing that was discussed a lot during the conference was how we should be better at internationalisation. And the question of how to be a more unified school came up several times. It’s a great asset to be as broad as the University of Gothenburg is, but we’re not good enough at using that resource. But the conference itself, with participants from all the faculties, was of course an important part of creating greater unification. We also discussed the importance of the university being engaged in the community. On the whole, it was a very good conference.

The question is just what we should do now to follow up all the positive things that came up during these two days.

Marie Rådbo, University lecturer at the Department of Physics

Chronicle

GUJOURNAL 2 | 2012

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Which headline won?

During the last pass on the first day the groups were given the task of writing a headline on the theme “University of Gothenburg 2020”. The headlines were printed and posted so that all the participants could vote for the best one at the gathering before dinner.

GU tops

the ranking

lists!

Deans at the Technical Faculty: “It’s fantastic!!

University of Gothenburg

at the top!

Most equal in the world

Answer: the winner was the one with “dementia”.

ference?

It wa s p r e t t y

Magnus Gunnarsson Division of Analysis and Evaluation

wa s un b e li e va b ly

professionally done and a lot of fun – I was excited for several days afterwards. In general I think that it was almost moving that GU involved employees over more than a term in workshops, seminars and now a conference that summarised them. We can’t forget that the goal – that we should be one single university – doesn’t only depend on the decisions of the management but also has to do with exactly these kinds of processes where heads of departments, researchers and other employees from different areas meet and talk together.

The most important question for the University is how we can create an ability to take strategic decisions. We are still a federal school but we’ve taken a number of small steps forward to being stronger. It doesn’t go quickly but rather slowly.

Lasse Lindkvist Head of the School of Photography

S o m e tim e s I t h in k back about why I started university studies at all. Comparative literature and philosophy – it was hardly any kind of clear work that I imagined and much less an academic career. After a while I started at the School of Economics (I never finished) and later theology. That’s the way it went. The driving force can be called, both then and now, curiosity.

M y ow n d r i v in g force for finding my way to university studies from the fairly unacademic environment in which I grew up probably doesn’t interest too many people.

At the same time I was reminded of this when I participated in the conference Vision and Choices 2020 in Varberg 8-9 February about vision work at the University of Gothenburg. Together with over a hundred people from all over GU I worked in a group for two days about the University of Gothenburg in the future. A number of questions about education, research and cooperation were gone through quickly and together we established that the University of Gothenburg wants to be a broad university with international leading edge competence and strong roots among students and the community in the future as well. Some more burning issues also came up, such as how the University of Gothenburg can actively contribute to decreasing segregation in the Swedish society.

I n ot h e r wo r d s , I was pretty satisfied with the vision conference, not least because it offered an opportunity to meet colleagues from all the faculties and not just my own. But I still miss something, namely a more lively discussion about the University’s idea. After all the opinions given about the University’s choices in the future I think we also have to articulate a story about the university as a unique actor in its time. The modern university’s idea is built – to make a long story short – on at least three earlier models: the college’s education for the sake of both general education and occupation with roots in the Middle Ages,

the Humboldt research and education university and Napoleon’s Polytechnique, that is the specialised occupational school. Today’s university can take something important from all these three.

I b e li e v e t h at a greater understanding of human life in all its dimensions – biological, social, cultural, spiritual, political – are the most critical concerns of the university. There is of course all reason to be happy about research results that can have immediate usefulness for society or the student; I don’t raise a toast for a pure unusefulness of research.

But at the same time, relevance is difficult to predict or order.

That is where curiosity comes in: the curiosity that hopefully leads to greater understanding. To be able to motivate our existence in terms of something other than short-term usefulness we must constantly return to the story about the university’s unique idea.

And what is this idea after all other than just exactly curiosity?

Ola Sigurdson

Professor of Systematic Theology Director of the Centre for Culture and He alth

photo: Johan Wingborg

and fun. I think that the design worked well considering that there were a hundred participants. It was very exciting to be able to meet so many people at the same time. It felt like we were there primarily to contribute to the strategy group. It isn’t so surprising that we could all agree that high quality in research and teaching, cooperation and internationalisation are important.

But maybe the point wasn’t that we should arrive at anything else.

There were many other, more original, thoughts and suggestions too, but agreement there wasn’t as great of course. fruit fu l

T h e co n fe r e n c e

SAY YES TO curiosity!

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Report

text allan eriksson | photo Johan Wingborg

Anja, researcher.

Affan, interpreter.

They can’t be found in any statistics, but they work.

Anja Franck travelled around Malaysia to chart women’s invisible work.

She had interpreter Zul Affan bin Ramli with her and his contribution was invaluable. He came to Anja’s dissertation

e m e e t the day before the dissertation at her workroom on the sixth floor of the School of Business, Economics and Law. The book has been printed and ready for a few weeks but Anja is anyway nervous and worried about how it’s going to go.

“It’s the first compilation thesis that has come from my department and, like everybody else, I’m afraid that the big bluff will be revealed,” she says in great earnest.

The result of five years of work summarised in 134 pages. At the same time there’s a feeling of happiness in the air. She confirms that the thesis has been the most fun thing she’s done in her whole life.

“It’s completely fantastic. Writing a thesis has been a dream enterprise. Everyone said to me that I’d get so tired of it, but I’m not. I’m incredibly interested in continuing to write articles about the material I have.”

I n t e r p r e t e r A ffan , at her side, is both touched and happy.

“I could hardly believe it was true when Anja told me that her supervisor Claes Alvstam had arranged for me to come here for the dissertation. I’m immensely thankful. What Anja has done is a fine and serious thing. I’m glad that I’ve been able to help,” he says humbly.

You can see that they know each other well. Anja and Affan have been together intensely a couple weeks a year for that past few years – sometimes 24 hours a day.

They’ve fought, argued, laughed. And along the way they’ve become good friends. Anja describes Affan more as a research assistant than an interpreter.

“We had to look for the women and Affan has been a great help there. He

The picture of women in developing countries as victims is often misleading, says Anja Franck, who together with interpreter Zul Affan bin Ramli has interviewed 80 Malaysian women.

arranged all the practical things, booked interviews and planned trips. Then anything could happen. We might have decided to do a number of interviews in a certain village but the road had washed away in the rain or the car broke down and we had to quickly get our hands on a motorcycle without there being any helmets.”

It was clear to Anja that Affan should be there on the big day.

“We’ve collected the material together with quite a lot of effort. It would have felt strange if he hadn’t been here when it was completed. No one knows the material as well as he does.”

In the past five years, Anja has travelled back and forth to Penang in Malaysia several times. In all, she, with Affan, has interviewed 80 Malaysian women who do not appear in official statistics.

T h e wo r k h a s b e e n fun, time-consuming and difficult all at the same time, Anja tells us as she thinks back on all the interviews that she did at markets or in the women’s homes.

“In the beginning I experienced the interview situation as pretty chaotic. There was a lot of noise everywhere. The women worked at the same time, sometimes they

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photo: Private

had to go off, the children came home from school and people sat down and wondered what we were doing. But Affan was very clever at deflecting everything that happened and following up where we were in the conversations.”

Anja’s family was with her for two and a half months. They lived in a tiny room with a large family of twelve persons that Anja had already gotten to know in 1995 when she travelled around in Malaysia. Anja felt that being able to live so close to a family was a great advantage compared to staying at a hotel.

Interview at the home of one of the respondents in the village of Teluk Bahang. Reading through the interview guide before the interviews at the “When I later went by myself the market in Teluk Bahang. children knew who I was living with and could send lists of the Malaysian candy that they wanted. Now Skype has revolutionalised life for working parents Malaysian women than it has for us. It who are far away. Just think that you can doesn’t mean that they don’t work. have contact daily and the children can “I who had read so much postcolonial show you their drawings.” theory thought that I was equipped for not landing in the easy pitfalls, but I did T h e r e w e r e s e v e r a l things that made it anyway. I believe that I became more aware Malaysia. Anja had travelled rather a lot that the context, that is the society and the in Southeast Asia earlier and, of all the culture, is very important, which has to be countries in the region, Malaysia has the respected. There isn’t only one way to look lowest proportion of women on the formal at development or equality. There isn’t only labour market – despite the fact that the one path.” country has the second highest GNP rate in factors that affect the opportunities that Southeast Asia, more women with a higher these women have, such as the demands education than men and that women have I n t e r p r e t e r A ffan also says that he’s that large industries place on workers as fewer and fewer children. It aroused her learned a lot from Anja and become aware well as societal norms. curiosity. of women’s work conditions in society.

Anja suggests that, in many ways, the “Malaysia has gone from being a deve“I see the whole picture much better export-oriented development model forms loping country to a middle-income country now,” he says. the perfect marriage between capitalism in an extremely short time. But in spite of I call Anja a few days after the dissertaand patriarchy. On the one hand: capitalism rapid economic growth and an increase in tion. She was bubbling: is interested in cheap labour that can be the level of education, female labor force “It actually went very well. The opponent easily dismissed. And young, unmarried participation rates have never reached said so many nice things about the thesis, women are the cheapest to employ. On the above 50 percent. The explanation is that and the party was fantastic.” other: the social norm says that married women stay for a short period of time on women should stay at home and take care the formal labour market.” of the children. When women get married, Women’s limited possibilities for permait suits both employers and families that nent employment also affect their right to Anja K arlsson Fr anck they stop working in factories. pensions, the social security and child care.

They also risk becoming more dependent Currently: Recently defended her thesis From on men.

Bu t t h e pi c t u r e of the women is not Formal Employment to Street Vending. Women’s Anja was surprised that there were so gloomy and one-sided, according to Anja. room to maneuver and labor market decisions few studies about women’s invisible work.

Even though the work conditions are tough under conditions of export-orientation – the case As they primarily work in the informal ecoand salaries often poor, the women make of Penang, Malaysia. Department of Human and nomy, they don’t appear in official statistics. active choices to support themselves.

Economic Geography.

“A majority of the world’s workers are “Even if the women are facing oppression Now: Works halftime at the Centre for European found in the informal economy. But since in the labour market, they’re not passive Research. Has also received a post doc scholarship we can’t quantify it, other methods have to victims. Quite the opposite, many of them from the Adlerbertska Forskningsstiftelse to study be used. You have to simply go out and see make active and strategic choices to master land conflicts as a consequence tourism developwhat they do and ask questions.” their situations.” ment in Penang.

For Anja Franck, who grew up with engaged ’68 parents and was brought up in the Age: 38 years What does your study say about women’s work spirit of the Swedish women’s movement conditions in other developing countries?

Family: Mother, sister, husband, two daughters, about the right to work , it has also been a “Export-oriented development is a nieces and nephews, family in-law and friends. useful test of preconceptions. celebrated model for creating employment.

Interests: Likes social debates. And crafts work.

“I come there as a Swedish middle class But in the Malaysian case, it has not manage And most of the things that mean that I get to be woman and interview women from a comto sustain women’s participation in the with family and friends – here at home and far away. pletely different cultural context. I’ve tried labour market for a longer period of time. not to interpret too much but instead have Unsuspected talents: Juggler and fire-eater.

If countries are going to export themselves District gold medallist in boule petanque. tried to share the women’s stories and put out of a kind of under-development, the them in a larger global context.” model has to include a number of social For example, it’s easy to draw hasty reforms in the labour market in order for it conclusions about equality. The concept of to be sustainable in the long run.” “housewife” has another meaning to many Anja also says that there are a lot of other

“A majority of the world’s workers are found in the informal economy.

But since we can’t quantify it, other methods have to be used.

text Eva Lundgren | photo Johan Wingborg

The future lies in small companies “A huge change. That’s what’s going on in the pharmaceutical industry. The multinational giants are having a harder and harder time creating something new. Instead it’s the small companies and the academic entrepreneurs that are blooming.”

This is what Thomas Hedner says. He’s a professor of clinical pharmacology who recently became a PhD in business administration.

W h at d o yo u d o when, at the age of 55, you’ve supervised about twenty doctoral students, published about 500 articles on cardiovascular diseases and been cited thousands of times in prestigious journals?

“That was what I was wondering about when I devoted a month to the El Camino pilgrimage seven years ago. I didn’t having much more than a raincoat, some t-shirts and an extra pair of shoes in my backpack.

The starting point was St. Jean de Piedde-Port and the ending point Santiago de Compostela. The hike went through the Pyrenees, 25 to 60 kilometers a day. It rained sometimes and sometimes the temperature was 30 degrees. But at an altitude of 1100 meters, you can really feel the cold, about 10 degrees. There was an unbelievable amount of exciting things to see along the road but it was also full of small cafés and restaurants to rest at. But the most interesting thing was all the meetings with different people who had fascinating stories to tell – Italians, Germans, Brazilians, of all ages and with a variety of backgrounds.”

Eight hundred kilometres and a number of foot blisters later he came to the place of pilgrimage, in good time for the mass in the city’s huge cathedral.

“Over a thousand pilgrims were there, several of whom I recognised from the

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pilgrimage. My wife Nina was also waiting for me. There are people who make the pilgrimage for deep religious reasons but most of them are roughly like me: people who need time to get rid of stress and maybe think about things. What did I find? That I wanted to do something more concrete than just write articles; I wanted to start an education program in innovation and entrepreneurship for medical students.”

T h e d ec i s i o n wa s n ’ t an idle quip. Thomas Hedner had just finished his Master of Business Administration at the School of Economics. And he had met Magnus Klofsten at a seminar who told him how the University of Linköping was making efforts in entrepreneur education programs.

He also had personal experience of business. For example, he had started DuoCort AB the year before together with some colleagues.

“Of course research is important. But you have to create value for society too. With the help of Associate Professor Boo Edgar, head of the GIBBS Master program, I started after a while the Unit for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Sahlgrenska Academy.

To give greater weight to research, I decided to do a second doctorate, now in business administration.”

He defended his thesis, which deals with pharmaceutical companies in transformation, at the end of January.

Since then his telephone has been ringing a lot.

At about the same time, AstraZeneca made the decision to shut down its operations in Södertälje.

And Thomas Hedner’s answer to all the questions about how things are going to be is a double one: on the one hand it’s no fun for all the people who will lose their jobs and, on the other hand, even more jobs will soon be created.

“Compare with what happened in Uppsala ten years ago. Pharmacia shut down, almost 3 000 employees had to go.

But now there are about 4 500 people working in smaller and middle sized medical companies. This probably gives greater possibilities in the future for highly educated young people in the sector.”

that the big companies haven’t shown much interest. It has to do with the approximately 250 000 people in Europe that suffer from Addison’s disease and who have a constant need of cortisone to survive.

“Earlier they were given tablets that have to be taken three times a day.

Cardiovascular diseases, obesity and osteoporosis were common side effects that are tied to the tablets giving too even an addition of cortisone – the natural state is to have a lot of cortisone in the blood in the morning and little in the evening. The medicine we developed gives a more normal addition of cortisone over the 24-hour period, which in principle makes the side effects disappear.”

T h e y ’ r e c a lle d Big Pharma, the giants in the pharmaceutical branch that require enormous investments to keep afloat. A new medication takes ten to twelve years to produce and can cost up to four billion dollars. Since the patent runs out after twenty years, the company has eight to ten years to make the project profitable.

“No wonder they don’t dare invest in drugs that are uncertain! Instead they come out with variants of the medications that already exist. Exciting discoveries are made instead at universities and smaller companies.”

Thomas Hedner himself is a shining example. DuoCort AB was sold last fall for over a billion crowns. The medication they developed is intended for a patient group

T h e in c u bato r that supported DuoCort is called Puls Partners. But Thomas Hedner’s group has three more companies on the way. They have to do with better medications for prostate cancer, bacterial vaginosis and the eye disease keratoconjunctivitis.

These companies are just examples of the huge system change that is going on in the business world, according to Thomas Hedner. This applies to the pharmaceutical industry but also to telecommunications, the record branch, publishers, perhaps even food production.

“Several things are driving this development, among them Internet. A small company with maybe fifteen employees can have a network with a thousand experts spread all over the world. They can cooperate with

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Profile

other researchers, entrepreneurs, financers and customers in a whole new way. The patent possibilities and value creation can be shared to create usefulness as optimally and rapidly as possible.”

Thus Thomas Hedner explains that not only universities but society as a whole have to do more to support innovation and entrepreneurship. And students have to get entrepreneurship in their education programs – because AstraZeneca’s shutdown

ted by how much knowledge people earlier had in their hands, in spite of lacking formal competence. I have a farm in Ulricehamn from the 1500s that I’ve hauled three log cabins to, one from Hälsingland and two from Norway, that I had disassembled and then assembled again. It’s like building with Lego – everything fits perfectly.”

Old houses are another of Thomas Hedner’s interests. When he doesn’t have his hands full with students, doctoral stu-

»Success also often has to do with creating value, not just for yourself but for others. in Södertälje will probably be followed by more changes in the branch that we have to be prepared for.

“Success often deals with having a vision, a goal and a strategy and with not looking back. Of course you risk failing sometimes and of course it can be frustrating to work hard and then not reach the results you’ve hoped for. But on the way you learn something, and that can be just as important as succeeding. Success also often has to do with creating value, not just for yourself but for others.”

Thoma s Hedner

Occupation: MD, professor of clinical pharmacology Currently: Has recently gotten a PhD in business administration at the University of Linköping with his thesis Change in the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Family: Wife Nina, four grown children and Labrador Myrra.

Residence: Intorp Manor outside of Ulricehamn.

Interests: Entrepreneurship, restoring old buildings, hunting, history Most recently read book: Steve Jobs – A Biography

by Walter Isaacson Most recently seen film: Sherlock Holmes – A Game of Shadows Favourite music: Bruce Springsteen (who’s one day older than I am) Favourite food: Game and fish Strength: Enthusiastic, persevering, entrepreneurial Weakness: All kinds of bureaucratic management Models: In terms of entrepreneurship: Michael Phelps: “Think, think big, think the biggest you can – everything is possible.” In science: Marie Curie: “I taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.”

W h e r e a r e t h e greatest needs in medicine?

According to Thomas Hedner, that’s the point of departure.

“Take Medicine for Malaria Venture in Switzerland as an example. It’s a non-profit foundation with about 50 employees that develops medications for malaria, which is something that the pharmaceutical giants didn’t think was profitable.”

Thomas Hedner predicts that more and more boundaries will be erased in our information society. This is also true for university education programs.

“We’ll have more virtual platforms where the teacher that’s best in a particular area does the teaching, regardless of whether he or she comes from Gothenburg, Uppsala or maybe Los Angeles. We’ll also be forced to change our pedagogy in its foundations and become more supervisors than traditional teachers. It’s the 25-year-olds that are leading this development and hopefully they’ll let us older people come along, because I have an extremely exciting job and can easily consider continuing to work until I’m 75. But then you have to know when it’s time to let go of your project and let younger people take over. That’s difficult for us in academia.”

T h e o ld e r g e n e r ati o n can instead contribute their experience, which takes time to develop, because knowledge isn’t only about theory. Thomas Hedner’s Master’s program in entrepreneurship includes one year of training, for example.

“Learning by doing is something that medical students are already used to – a person who will be operated on is probably grateful if the surgeon has practiced before and not just read the book. I can be fascina-

dents and young entrepreneurs he drives to the farm and trims or works with wood.

“A few years ago my wife and I were in Fazana, an old Roman village in Croatia known for its manufacturing of amphora.

We happened to meet a couple from Partille that had a house there that we thought looked pleasant. They told us that a similar house was for sale. So we bought it and we’re restoring it now. I like to bring out old environments, at the same time that I’m no fanatic, every detail doesn’t have to be exact. But it’s important to do something completely different sometimes. It could be painting an old house. Or leaving all your worries behind you and just hiking for a month.”

PHoto: privat

In 2005 Thomas Hedner hiked 800 kilometers to Santiago de Compostela.