2025 Distinguished Teaching Award winner encourages curiosity and dialogue

In May 2025, you learned that you had been chosen for the Distinguished Teaching Award in the area of law and social sciences.

Were you surprised?
“Yes, very! I thought I had an important meeting with my head of department, so I was totally fooled.”

Do you know who nominated you?
“No, I have no idea whatsoever. As I said, it was all very surprising and I hadn’t even considered that I might be nominated.”

You received the award for being a responsive and engaged teacher who encourages curiosity and dialogue.

Do you use any special techniques in your teaching?
“I’m probably no different from other talented teachers in my department. But something I often think is to keep things simple; don’t complicate things unnecessarily. You can say things in simple ways, without using opaque terminology. It’s important to have the courage to steer clear of nuances, correct terminology and alternative perspectives, even when the teacher is very familiar with them. Often it’s difficult enough to learn just one aspect of something that is fundamentally new. This then makes it easier later on to understand the nuances and alternatives. Indeed, a good solid understanding can even facilitate and stimulate critical thinking about what is most interesting or fruitful in terms of understanding society.”

In your role as teacher, what do you think is most important when teaching your students?
“Seminars work poorly if the students perceive them as a test on homework, where they think it’s important to say only smart things and avoid saying anything that’s not correct. That’s why it’s important to get students to relax, so they can ask questions they don’t know the answers to and dare to think out loud, critically and creatively. And ideally offer a reflection that might not fully hold water, but does lead on to something else precisely for that reason. It’s a great way to learn something together. It’s not easy because we have very ambitious students, who can often feel strongly competitive. But I try to create an atmosphere that feels open and welcoming, and prevent classes from becoming just a parade for the most confident.”

Do you also contribute to your colleagues’ educational development?
“I think one of the strengths of our department is that we work in teams of teachers. Nothing should be just one individual teacher’s own course. In the teams, we self-critically evaluate what’s good and what can be improved. For the course where I share the head teacher role with Anna Michalski, all the teachers meet before each seminar. We review how well the previous seminar went, what the main educational objective is of the upcoming seminar, and we share educational solutions that worked well, or less well and therefore should be avoided.

“So the answer to your question is yes; like everyone else in the teaching teams and at the department, I contribute to the educational development of the others. In other words, it’s not any one person’s own initiative, but a natural part of a functional organisation.”

Do you have any concrete tips, advice and thoughts about teaching?
“It’s important to reflect on how you can use your personality in a way that works in your teaching. For me, it doesn’t work to just have a number of talking points about information from a textbook. That doesn’t give me any energy at all. I want a coherent, important and interesting story that I feel that I want to convey. That’s why I try to structure the educational points in a teaching module into that kind of story. I often connect it to my own experiences to make it come alive, both for me and for others.

“When I feel I have something to say with a logical structure, it’s easy to speak without a script and I can digress without getting lost. It’s also more fun, which I’m sure the students notice. I often have to work hard to create a structure that I feel comfortable with. It rarely comes by itself.”

What will you do with the award money?
“I had no idea there was any award money, so I don’t know. Maybe I’ll treat the team to some bubbly when we next discuss how to develop and improve ourselves and our course.”

Ulrika Hurtig