Summer greetings

As the academic year draws to a close, it will soon be time for some much-needed rest and recuperation. It has been a tough year for the organisation in many ways, not least financially. And things will be tight going forward too. At the same time, in our disciplinary domain, we have taken many steps forward to promote our activities. We have worked on issues concerning premises – mainly on the Gamla torget campus – as well as IT issues. Through the new UU-wide process for digital operational development, we can highlight the areas that the Humanities and Social Sciences deems most important for the University to work on. It turns out that all disciplinary domain agree that data management should be a top priority. And so it shall be.

The Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences has also continued to work on research infrastructures. This year will be the first year that our infrastructure committee has allocated funds to projects promoting new initiatives. This is a priority area – future research in the humanities and social sciences requires access to relevant and high-quality research infrastructures. And we are in a good position here in Uppsala. Another current issue is education’s link to the world of work. Much has been said this spring in the debate concerning the establishment of humanities students in the labour market, and on the relevance of freestanding courses. I have written about this issue elsewhere, with the main point being that it is the HEIs who are responsible for the range, size and quality of programmes and courses, and they should therefore be given the freedom to decide. But we always have reason to be self-critical. Uppsala Student Union recently published a report which pointed out that humanities students do not always know which areas they can work in when they finish their education, with some feeling that the link to the world of work is weak. In line with this, we will work across faculty lines to strengthen the link to the world of work in our programmes.

Education’s link to the world of work and academic freedom will also be the theme of a seminar at Almedalen this year: Higher education: for whose sake? This theme asks who is in charge of our programmes and whether we need a national strategy for higher education. Researchers from the Humanities and Social Sciences are also strongly represented at Almedalen, with 14 (as many as 31 if we count the seminars at SpelAlmedalen) seminars during which we will showcase ourselves and develop exchanges with external stakeholders and the public. Themes such as AI, identity and human dignity, nuclear threats, the super election year and youth gaming culture are just a few examples. Several of the seminars will be live-streamed and recorded.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very happy summer and look forward to seeing you again soon.