It takes longer and longer for researchers to become permanently employed in academia, according to a report from the Swedish Research Council. Since there are very few career development positions, more and more researchers are forced to take various insecure, temporary jobs."Sweden needs a more effective, nationwide career system," says Director-General Sven Stafström.
Research has to become more accessible, both for the general public and for other researchers. This is what doctor and researcher Ajibola Omokanye argues, and who is now launching Explainartist, an international platform for research communication which is based on images.
Sixteen internationally acclaimed researchers have been recruited to Sweden with money from the Swedish Research Council. Political Scientist Ellen Lust is one of them. In June, she will move her research from Yale to the University of Gothenburg.
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.
