Heléne Lööw is an associate professor in history and is best known for her extensive research on fascist movements in Sweden. She decided to be a researcher already as a child and she has not allowed chaotic spelling to get in the way. Heléne Lööw now wants to know more and write more, especially on riots and political violence.
The current system for scientific publication was created at a time when there were fewer articles and the pressure to publish was less. The ranking of journals now plays an increasingly large role and there are an increasing number of problems in publishing.
The big issues about how researchers can help to create a sustainable society and a better world are uniting young academies around the world. Researchers from 27 countries were engaged by these issues at the second global meeting of the world's young academies in Stockholm. You can also listen to Curie's podcast from this meeting.
Clearer career paths, gender equality, better conditions for research, dialogue with the public, power to influence research policies. These are some of the issues that the Young Academy of Sweden has driven since it was founded four years ago.
In Portugal the society supports women making career choices. The challenge in the academia is more concerned about finding a niche of their own in research to handle the competition and the effects of the financial crisis.
Germany has a low number of female scientists, particularly in higher positions. The Curie magazine has visited Jacobs University in Bremen and spoken to Professor Katja Windt about how the conditions for women in science can improve.
Several seats of learning are establishing associate senior lecturer positions to get more distinctive career paths and be able to recruit the best scientists. These are four-year meriting employments, which since 2013 once again are included in the Higher Education Ordinance. But in spite of these efforts it is still only a reform on paper, means Karin Åmossa, Research manager at the Swedish Association of University Teachers.
The meriting system of science contributes to make the scientific language inaccessible and boring. But there are scientists, who want to communicate in other ways and questions the prevailing norms for writing scientific texts.
She has revolutionised women's role in the development work and challenged the World Bank's view of poverty. British social anthropologist Caroline Moser is a pioneer in the field of development research. She tells Curie about what it is like as a researcher not only to want to understand the world, but also to help improve it.
At the United Nations summit in late September, the new sustainability goals intended to help create a better world for people and the environment were made official. The goals are great in number and comprehensive in scope. This means that goals such as eradicating poverty disappear in the masses, according to researchers that Curie has spoken to.
