INTERDISCIPLINARITY. Globalization and migration are currently changing the world and the foundations on which it is based. A new cross-university center is currently being established at the Faculty of Social Sciences, aimed at, among other things, facilitating more fact-based debate in society. Henrik Sjövall, who is representing the Sahlgrenska Academy in this steering group, believes that the center is a unique opportunity to acquire new knowledge in a field that will have a major bearing on our futures.
Research motivated by curiosity or relevance, that is the question! There seems to be widespread agreement that major breakthroughs are being made in research motivated by curiosity, yet often it is relevance that is the driving factor. You might recall an “Akademiliv” article I previously wrote (http://130.241.135.136/2014/09/20139/), in which I, as part of an obituary for Ove Lundgren, also told the story of how Copernicus discovered that the Earth rotates around the sun, and not the other way around, resulting in the Pope assigning him the task of amending the calendar!
To find reasons for conducting relevance-based research, you simply have to open the newspaper: globalization and migration are tearing our society apart and re-drawing the political map. Without wanting to go further into the point at issue – you can probably guess what I think on the matter – it is quite obvious that we need to understand the forces that drive people to leave their home countries. The University of Gothenburg has already invested resources in this area, in the form of the major “UGOT challenges” project, which saw the Sahlgrenska Academy play a key role on two occasions – one project about aging and one project about resistance to antibiotics. GU has now taken a step in this same direction, by setting up a Center for Global Migration (CGM) at the University of Gothenburg, a cross-institutional investment that will encompass all faculties generally speaking. The CGM is going to collect research regarding migration within fields such as anthropology, medicine, psychology, political science, religion, history, pedagogy, law, economics and sociology.
The Center will be located in its obvious home, the Global Studies institution at Samfak, with the Sahlgrenska Academy, by being a member of the steering group, also set to have a major say in proceedings. We also pushed very hard for part of the Center to be dedicated to “implementation” research i.e. attempting to investigate the effects of different investments in integration. This is going to be done in close collaboration with the Västra Götaland Region and the City of Gothenburg. Sweden has taken a very large integration task upon itself, but very little controlled scientific research exists into the effects of the different investments in integration. With our personal identity number system, our largely publicly-funded and effective administration, and our general consensus on basic ethics, we should be in a position to do this in certain areas and find out what works.
Sweden has of course also recently been honored in another way, with a completely new research institution – the Swedish Institute for Global Health Transformation (SIGHT) – which will be housed at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and be led by Gothenburg’s Peter Friberg, from the Sahlgrenska Academy. As you are aware, migration and global health go hand in hand, with Bill and Melinda Gates now also seemingly taking the view that Sweden has unique conditions in which to acquire new knowledge in this field, which is expected to play a pivotal role in the future of our planet.
Time for us in Sweden to do our bit then!
I would like to say “thanks” to GU for showing faith in and leading this project, “congratulations” to Peter Friberg for SIGHT, and would like to encourage anyone interested in migration and health as a topic to contribute to the new research center!
Henrik Sjövall
