Over 40 years of partnership with the University of Minnesota

“Our partnership has been going since 1982, when Stig Strömholm was the first lecturer to go on an exchange to Minnesota,” says Eric Bylander, Professor of Procedural Law at Uppsala University.

The exchange is for both lecturers and students. Bylander himself was there as a student in 1997. He later returned as a lecturer and visiting professor in 2015 and 2019 – taking his family on both occasions.

“Many have been able to bring their families on the exchange, which has created very strong bonds, not only academically but also on a personal level. This has no doubt played a part in the way the exchange programme has lived on. Moreover, it’s relatively simple in administrative terms. As a lecturer, you keep your salary and have expatriate benefits from your own university, so it doesn’t involve a lot of financial transactions between the universities. Very much the same applies where students are concerned.”

How many people have participated in the exchange over the years?

“The exact number is unknown, but an estimated 650 students and 50 lecturers over a period of more than 40 years. Many have become very successful and the first students are approaching retirement or have already retired.”

Book launch for jubilee publication

Now the exchange between the two universities will be celebrated during a trip to Uppsala’s sister city Minneapolis and to New York, which the Vice-Chancellor and other representatives of Uppsala University are making together with representatives of the municipality and the county administrative board.

This will include the launch of a jubilee publication on the exchange between the universities. The editors are Eric Bylander and Bob Stein, who was Dean of the Law School when the exchange began. He received an honorary doctorate in law from Uppsala University in 1993 and has long been involved in the American Friends of Uppsala University.

“One important consequence of the exchange between the law departments is that Uppsala and Minneapolis became sister cities 25 years ago. This is mainly what the delegation from Uppsala is travelling to celebrate,” says Bylander.

“One of the exchange professors who travelled from Minnesota to Uppsala in the late 1990s was a former long-time mayor of Minneapolis. This was how the idea of further opportunities for collaboration was born. You could say that our exchange was the seedbed from which the sister city programme grew.”

Learned a lot about Swedish law

In New York, the delegation will meet Erik Ullenhag, an alumnus of Uppsala University and now Sweden’s Consul-General in New York.

“He has also written in the jubilee book, where he observes that he never learned so much about Swedish law and Sweden as when he was in the United States. I think this is true for both students and lecturers. You not only experience another culture, you also learn a lot about your own,” says Bylander.

“In addition, you get a broader knowledge base and can make comparisons between things that we may take for granted and how things are elsewhere.”

Annica Hulth