Tips on Swedish academia

Welcome to GU!

This guide was written by me, Nikolay Marinov. I am here to help you join the Department of Political Science at the University. I have appointed myself to be the department’s on-boarding coordinator. I was trained as Ph.D. in the US, I had a teaching and research career in the US and Germany and I have more recently started to adjust to life in Sweden. I think the points below may be of use to people who plan to teach and research at the Department in Gothenburg, especially those who have limited experience with Swedish academia. The guide is currenly not endorsed in any formal way so it is really a set of ruminations that you consume at your own risk.

General overview

(1) A note

Academia in Sweden - in terms of organization - is very different from, say, academia in the US or even the closer system of German academia. It is similar in the sense of classes are taught and research gets done, faculty positions can be with or without tenure, and the like. But how this happens differs. Do not assume that you will simply learn it by doing. Spend some time asking questions. That means, when people send you an email with two attachments and give you a task, if your first reaction of, well this is straightforward enough, this may not be the best reaction. The memo here and the meetings we will aim to run throughout the year are meant to help along.

(2) Classes

Students at a US college typically register for 5 courses per semester and have a schedule that has each course meeting each week at the same allocated time slot. Courses in Sweden are often sequential, you finish one, take the next one, you do not have to meet at the same time slot (you may meet three days on a row for 4 hours, then in two-weeks time for 6 hours and such). The BA program is taught primarily in Swedish. All students write a capstone essay, BA thesis, and need a supervisor. More on that soon. The MA is taught in English. Аnother important difference is that a teacher teaching a class seldom means this instructor actually leading all or even most of the lectures. If you supervise a thesis, you will not be grading it. And you will be evaluating theses others supervised. This will lead to some situations you are not necessarily used to such as you wondering what the standards for evaluating someone else’s supervision criteria are. Ask. General writing style is also probably different - we are working to improve writing and presentation skills. ASK is a writing center at the University you can refer students to - they can get personalized assistance with their own academic writing. As with many of the things brought up here, all is in flux, so if you wish to help improve something, you are welcome to.

(3) Research

Research is organized the same way you are probably used to, except there is a big reliance on grants. Grants are used to purchase inputs such as survey data, to buy-out teaching time, and possibly to hire research collaborators. Currently, no special sessions are held at the Department to introduce people to deadlines and grants agencies. We are working on that, too.

(4) Talks

There is a variety of talks and seminars by insiders and outsiders. You are encouraged to go, depending on your interest and time. Note that PhD students present their work periodically as part of the seminar series - it is important to go, in order to learn about research conducted at the department and provide feedback to our students.

(5) Doctoral Program

The Department admits about 7-8 students each year. They take about a year of classes. That means they are expected to come more or less trained to the Department. How committees are formed is somewhat unclear but the student has a large role. Also unclear how you get credit for supervision.

(6) Swedish

I am not aware of any specific legal requirements to learn Swedish but this is sort of like England’s unwritten constitution: you do it because you are expected to do it. There are good reasons. The BA programs is in Swedish, if you do not speak the language, you cannot teach and supervise. Hardly a recipe to be liked by your colleagues (and frankly you will miss out on an opportunity to meet some awesome students). Many admin positions and duties require knowledge of Swedish. The university’s admin website (Primula) has an English translation but it is hard enough to navigate the Swedish one - the English menus are downright confusing. If you go to the doctor, chances are you will be filling out a questionnaire about your health - in Swedish. And so on. While many or most Swedes speak English, the working language of the country is Swedish and you are no tourist. On how to do it - invest early on, take all A-level classes in Folks University or something of the sort - 4 to 6 months commitment. Once you have a good foundation and a solid start, you can continue learning on your own over time. You will already be in a position to sit in on meetings held in Swedish and such. If you postpone, life is busy - five years later you may be in the same boat.

(7) How many classes will I teach?

That is a nearly impossible question to answer in general. It depends on your position, on the precise tasks you may have been asked to do, and on whether you have won research money. The system relies on task compartmentalization and on counting hours. Some of this has to do with laws and labor unions. So if you supervise a student writing a thesis, you will get 20 hours for the semester. All the things you sign up for or do “at the job” are supposed to accumulate into so many hours teaching and so many hours research. In fact, these are numbers you will have to fill into Redondo or Primula, as aggregate numbers. So keep track of meetings, of supervisions and keep asking what needs to be counted how. This is very different from the US system where you may be told to teach n classes a semester, sit on a few committees, and the rest is for your research. It does not mean there will be less or more time for research in Sweden than what you know - it only means it is all counted differently and in practice your day and year would look somewhat different.

More In-depth

(A) General organization of the Department, more on your teaching duty

There are different faculty directors (Director of Graduate Studies, Directior of BA Study, Director of Master Studies, other programs) who work, with support by admin staff, to help organize work and teaching at the Department. Their appointment follows regular calls, and generally involves a three-year mandate (often renewed for a total of six-years service in that position). The Chair appoints people to positions. Some positions such as that of the Director responsible for the PhD program may be at the Chair’s discretion entirely and not come up for a call. If you do hold one of the director positions, this can count toward your teaching hours - depending on the position, possibly accounting for a quite substantial part of them.

While most US universities have a system of self-rule by faculty, in which all decisions by the Department are voted on during regular committee meetings, this is not how self-governance works in Sweden. There is a departmental council with limited membership which meets twice a semester, and two large all-member meetings in the Fall and Spring to go over what is happening at the Department, but this is more to advise and to take questions. In practice, the Chair and appointed faculty directors decide - though of course they will strive to take decisions most members of the Department would agree with.

Note also that academic work language used in Sweden differs in some important ways - “faculty” is not usually used for people who teach and research (instead Fakultat is a certain part of the University, above the Departmental level). You are considered a department member - a researcher and a teacher. In the same sense, the division between PhD students, postdocs and faculty is not so stark in Sweden: all are teaching and research staff. Similarly, your admin duties as faculty will not be referred to as such - instead, they are considered part of your teaching obligations.

How much you teach and what that means. This is very different from what you may be used to. You are given a breakdown between teaching and research - this breakdown defines what proportion of time you devote to one or the other, and translates to actual hours, measured, and summed on an yearly basis. Since all is governed by laws and agreements with labor unions, once a year you would also be obligated to enter the resulting hours in a system online (Retendo, there will be helpful administrators and faculty to keep track how many hours you have done and to help you enter them, but you should also save some type of a record of what you have done during the year for just in case).

Further note on teaching. You may be used to a system in which you own courses - you teach two a semester, say. You may or may not “own” or have a course of your own in Sweden, its teaching may or may not span an entire semester, and you may be asked to contribute teaching hours to any course where you fit. So, the closest to owning a course is being called a course coordinator, a position in which you create the course outline and keep track of the “course budget” - number of hours budgeted for the teaching of the course. You may teach all on that course but that is rare - you may ask for help teaching modules of it. Keep in mind that as you build up the schdule - and say, enter a two hour lecture on a certain date, you will debit hours from the course budget, in this case 8 hours - the reason you enter 8 for 2 is that you allow for preparation time and so on. There is a formula, actually more than one. The formulas for these correspondences are sth you can get help with, as you build the course.

To take one example, a 15 credit (credits are something the students care about) undergraduade course can have 25 students, take 10 weeks during a 20 week semester, the period spanning Jan 20th to March 26th, involve 180 budget hours, and be taught by a variety of instructors - who all “claim” part of the teaching budget. In the end, on an yearly basis, what you countribute to teaching and research, as hours must sum up to the total number of hours you are supposed to work for in your position. Courses are sequential, which means that students, in that program, will be taking only the course you are coordinating, during the weeks it meets. You can have any number of assignments, including a proctored final exam. Course materials and evaluations take place in Canvas and Ladok and you would need some assistance with least some of that.

(B) PhD Students

We admit around four PhD students each year, they get full support for their studies for 4 years which they can extend for an extra year by teaching or by other work. Anyone with a PhD in hand can supervise PhDs. The process via which advisors are assigned to PhDs depends on the serving faculty director and the students themselves. There is a steering supervising committee that meets once a semester and discusses items such as student progress, admission, and similar. Anyone with a PhD can attend and learn and contribute regardless of whether they are currently supervising. Speak to the director of the PhD program about that. There is green-reading of dissertations by two faculty unrelated to the supervision to make sure that they are up to standards. You may be asked to do that and produce a short report of recommended changes. There is also a public defence. Most PhD students continue in academia upon graduation.

(C) BA and MA Theses

All students produce a thesis. That is usually 130 undergraduates a year and some masters’ students - 20 or 30. Theses are submitted both semesters which means that you can be asked to supervise during either or both, and you may be asked to be the main or support examiner for a thesis during both. If you supervise, you do not examine the same thesis. Supervisors are responsible for making sure the work is up to standard and may advise the student to submit as planned or hold off if not ready. The student may not abide by the recommendation but that is rare. This is one reason theses are seldom not passed - if one has problems it is unlikely to be submitted. We are working on a system to sync expectations between examiners and supervisors. Typically examination of theses, by teaching staff and faculty and staff who played no role in the production of the theses is scheduled over a three-day period at the end of each semester, and at the start of the fall semester. At least one examiner needs to be present and both examiners need to consult over what they think about the thesis (one report is written, by the main examinator). You can expect to be given at least several months warning if you will be examining so that you can reserve a time on your calendar.

(D) Reserving Rooms

Оffices in the Haga campus are generally small. While a one on one meeting probably works, you may want to meet elsewhere is the party is larger. We have three conference rooms - Kronan, Vasa, Kuben, that can be reserved by anyone via the Boka Lokal function in the system. If you need to reserve one of the bigger conference rooms, any administrator can help you with that.

(E) Buying Things

Do not buy things directly - ask an administrator to make the purchase. This applies also to furniture and such. If you have your own research budget that may be different, we will run some events so you know how it works.

(F) Grants and Research Budgets

In general, you need to win your research money so there would be little if any support provided by the Department. We are working to create more of a process via which people learn about the many grant opportunities, see samples of successful and possible projects, and so on. Most application deadlines are around March.

(G) IT

Call 0317860000 for IT Support. Sometimes they will manage the issue remotely, or they will come to your office after booking a time. We use Microsoft Outlook, Calendar, Teams. We are working to set up training for these, possibly via IT or through the Department. You can send emails to the entire Department via a mailing list. We use Canvas for teaching.

(H) Library

There is a city library and the university has its own library. Both are ran very professionally and you can order and get materials easily. I am not aware of any suppor

(I) HR

You will get a lot of help initially with setting up your life in Sweden - including registering you with the authorities. In addition to these key items, there is some administrative things that are unique to working in Sweden. For example, we have to periodically enter some information online, how much we work and similar. You also get some goodies such as some medical expenses are reimbursed and you get free glasses, paid access to a gym. We are working to set up a short intro on how to do some of these things most easily in the system.

(J)

Finally, the last item for fitting into the Department concerns your colleagues. They can help along. Remarks such as you are just a tourist, Swedish is easy, not communicating to you directly and promptly any concerns are not helpful even when kindly meant. People who are used to how things work do not necessarily understand the full degree to which life and academia in Sweden are different, and the many challenges you are successfully clearing. Tell them. Explain how they can help. It takes a village.