Letter from the Dean

The spring semester is underway, feeling deceptively long at the beginning but quickly filling up. Almost fifty newly admitted doctoral students joined us last year, and about the same number defended their theses at our departments! The faculty's investment in co-funding for new doctoral students is evident in the number of admissions, and it's great to see all the new, interesting projects starting up.

For doctoral education, the spring of 2024 means that the quality work has started with a new cycle. What does this mean for you at department level? Until May, you can work on the current situation analysis, discussing how doctoral education functions both within your own department and on the levels outside the department. The results of this work will then form the basis for the continued work at the faculty. The hope for this cycle is partly that the quality work at department level becomes much more concrete, and partly that we at faculty level continue to identify issues that are problematic but that we can work on together to improve the education for our doctoral students.

It has now been seven years since we started the quality assurance work in its current form, so in one way we are experienced in this. Many both smaller and larger changes and improvements have been made. It will be interesting to see how the advanced course in research supervision for experienced doctoral supervisors will progresses in the coming years. The course is a direct result of discussions about the quality of supervision that we had a few years ago, and which is an ongoing process at the faculty. I hope now that you find both the time and commitment to have good discussions between PhD students and supervisors. Here you have an open opportunity to influence and improve the education! I, as usual, look forward to meeting some of you during the various meetings this spring, with directors of studies, research schools, heads of departments, and especially with new PhD students at the PhD introduction. With that, I wish you a really good late winter!

Petra Fransson
Vice Dean for Doctoral Education

Photo: Cajsa Lithell