Summary of the Operational Plan of the Board of the Faculty of Languages for 2026
SUMMARY OF
SUMMARY OF THE OPERATIONAL PLAN OF THE BOARD OF THE FACULTY OF LANGUAGES FOR 2026
On 13 November 2025, the board of the Faculty of Languages decided its operational plan for 2026. The plan allocates funds for each department’s ongoing work including its quality-enhancing work. In addition, funds are set aside for faculty-wide initiatives.
As with the last two years, the educational mission is laid out in terms of full-year students (HÅS). The distribution of HÅS is based on the departments´ requests. The final proposal to the faculty board is determined in dialogue with each department and the faculty´s Planning Committee.
The governmental funding received by the departments for their work is partly based on student completion rate in recent years.
The 2026 operational plan in its entirety can be found here.
OF SPECIAL NOTE FOR 2026
The faculty board has decided on a strategic plan that will begin to be implemented during 2026. Drawing on the strategic plan, the faculty board will device goals and strategies for the faculty. For this year, there will also be a new round of external evaluations of our educational offerings.
Several terms of office at the university will come to their close mid-year 2026. This is also the case for the Faculty of Languages, including its board as well as faculty leadership (dean and deputy deans). This also includes the committee members of those boards and committees formed by the faculty board.
FINANCES IN BRIEF
The Disciplinary Domain Board is awarding the faculty 205 million kronor in state grants for operations in 2026. Of this, 90 million kronor are earmarked for education at bachelor and master levels and 115 million kronor to research and education at postgraduate level. These funds must also finance joint projects at the university and disciplinary domain level totaling 52 million kronor (overhead).
The corresponding sums for 2025 were 90 million kronor for education and 113 million kronor for research.
In addition to grants for education and research, the vice-chancellor also allocates special funds for training available to the university as a whole such as the Language Workshop and staff language courses in Swedish and English. In total, the faculty receives 15 million kronor for these activities.
Finally, the faculty receives a total of 730 thousand kronor for each language for which we have national subject coordination responsibility, a total of 7 million kronor.
Thus, the faculty receives in full just over 227 million kronor for its 2026 operations. The faculty board is also contributing this year a total of 3.5 million kronor from its residual capital - of which 1 million kronor is allocated undergraduate educational offerings and 2.5 million kronor to research. This enables a higher distribution of allocated funds to the departments than would otherwise be the case.
QUALITY-ENHANCING INITIATIVES FOR 2026
Every year, the board decides on initiatives in strategic development areas and quality-enhancement activities. These usually have a three-year horizon.
Strategic plan. The strategic plan that was decided on by the faculty board will be put into effect 2026-01-01 until 2030-12-31. Some aspects of this plan have already been implemented with regards to educational offerings, educational directives, and operational planning. Revised quality criteria will also be applied to the faculty’s educational offerings as of 2026. The plan also includes strategic considerations to improve the conditions for research and education at third cycle level education.
The strategic plan can be found here.
Faculty open forums. Four to five faculty open forums are planned for 2026. The forums aim to foster links between the faculty’s departments as well as different staff categories.
Career-related education, alumni activities and student recruitment. The faculty has a mentoring program to build networks between current students and the job market with the help of alumni. The aim is also to develop and strengthen the quality of the education as well as to support higher retention and throughput. Funds will be allocated for this purpose also in 2026.
Collegium for Language Education. As part of this initiative, it is possible to do peer observation, attend teaching-related conferences and other activities for knowledge sharing and best practice. In 2026, this will include capacity-building activities for teaching with practitioners in related fields.
Conference participation. The departments have been given the task of supporting participation at academic conferences for masters students as well as teachers participating in educational conferences.
Doctoral education coordinator. The faculty board has decided to appoint a teacher with special responsibility for doctoral education at the faculty in order to strengthen those aspects of a doctoral degree that are shared across the departments. Together with departmental directors of postgraduate studies, the duties include to contribute to the development, implementation, and quality assurance of doctoral programs at the faculty. The appointee will ensure that individual study plans are adhered to and that shared seminars and activities are offered, as well as oversee the faculty-wide recruitment of doctoral candidates at the faculty. The exact duties will be decided upon at a later stage.
The coordinator will be appointed by the faculty board for a period of three years. It is expected that the appointment will be at 30%.
Faculty Research School in Digital Philology. Since 2023, the faculty hosts the research school in digital philology financed by the Swedish Research Council. The research school will be receiving funding for two postdocs in order to strengthen its research environment long-term.
Research environment. The board sets aside funding to support the following faculty research networks: Language and Learning as well as Historical Linguistics (SPHINX) as well as Literary Studies Research Network (LangLit).
Funding for research environment building. The faculty board allocates money also this year to stimulate interdepartmental research activities. Two calls will be published through MI and Langteach, the first in January and the second later in the spring. Grants of up to SEK 50,000 may be applied for by employed teachers and researchers at the faculty.
Swedish Institute for North American Studies (SINAS). The faculty board of the disciplinary domain earmarks certain funding for SINAS also for 2026. In addition to this, the Faculty Board has also earmarked funding.
Distribution of governmental funding of research. Following a review of the faculty's model for allocating the governmental funding of research, the board decided that the departments' publication points should have increased weighting. This change has been implemented over the last two years and it now totals 5 % of the disciplinary domain’s allocated money to the faculty.