Infrastructures are perhaps mainly associated with natural science research, but now it is developing within the humanities and within the social sciences. “This can revolutionise research”, argues Joakim Palme, professor of political science at Uppsala University.
Recruiting the best researchers is one thing, but ensuring that they produce exceptional research - perhaps even a Nobel Prize - is something else. The next challenge becomes keeping these excellent researchers and staying on top.
All signs indicate that it has become much less acceptable to criticise your own organisation. This is what political scientist Shirin Ahlbäck Öberg says, who argues that this is a result of the autonomy reform.
She is going to take the Curie blog readers on ”An Expedition into the Heart of the Humanities”. Dolly Jørgensen is a historian of the environment and technology at Umeå University and the first Curie blogger who writes in English.
The Iranian-American Mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani has become the first woman to be awarded the Fields medal – the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize."This is a big breakthrough as women have had a hard time claiming their rightful place within the field of mathematics," says Gerd Brandell researcher in Mathematics Education.
Instead of recruiting as many postdocs as possible, Lund University is trying to recruit them as smartly as possible. This is one of the results of an initiative to introduce stricter regulations on stipend funding.
It began as a survey among Karolinska Institutet’s postdoctoral students, which showed that many postdocs were dissatisfied with their situation. Discussions to improve these terms are in progress.