New as chair of the Stockholm Trio
Sigbritt Karlsson took over as chair of the Stockholm Trio University Alliance on 1 July. Her aim is to take the partnership with the Karolinska Institute and Stockholm University a step further.
“I am going to seek to promote international issues even further on our behalf where we make ourselves visible and strong together including via joint representation in Brussels that will be staffed from the autumn,” says Karlsson.
Another focus will be to nurture the cooperation culture.
“Finding a good balance between each university’s freedom and the combined capacity and pulling power of Stockholm is important. We three together are playing in a completely different league globally when it comes to education and research issues compared to what we each can do individually. We all have a great deal to gain from a systematic in the partnership.”
Will I as an employee notice this over the course of the year that you are chair?
“I certainly hope so. We have a number of joint working groups where work is progressing. More and more municipalities are going to be involved and engaged. For example, a working group has developed more specific goals for the Alliance which will enable us to take several and more concrete steps moving forward. Various initiatives and activities will most likely be noticed both locally and regionally.”
However Karlsson stresses that this will not happen overnight and even with such a clear direction, Stockholm trio ought to be given time to grow organically in order to become really effective.
Another change is that Fredrik Oldsjö of Stockholm University and Head of the Coordination Secretariat, will spend half his working week on the KTH campus at Brinellvägen 8.
What do you hope the University Alliance Stockholm Trio will have achieved in the next five years?
“That we will have become an even more attractive cooperation partner internationally, that we have a number of exciting joint degree programmes, more research where, together, we offer a complete breadth of programmes to find multidisciplinary solutions that are linked to the global sustainable development goals. Within operational support, we will also have found synergy effects and new ways of working together.”
Jill Klackenberg