We are very happy to welcome Adam Koberinski and Lukas J. Meier to the HT Faculties. Both are international recruitments through the Lund University initiative formerly known as Shape the Future of Research, now rebranded as the Lund University Programme for Global Excellence. The interest in this call from Humanities and Theology applicants was tremendous, and we are deeply grateful to all who applied. Had resources allowed, I could easily have appointed ten excellent and highly qualified applicants. We are now preparing the next round of calls, and I hope the interest will continue. Stay tuned.
Working with strategic recruitments of this kind has been both exciting and instructive, and we have gained experiences that I believe will strengthen our regular recruitment processes going forward. We are, I think, only at the beginning of realising the importance of global talent scouting—while remembering that some of the very best candidates may already be close by—and aligning this with actual recruitment opportunities. This includes combining international outreach with open calls, transparent processes, strong start-up packages, thorough pre‑ and on‑boarding, and strategic research funding.
But the devil is in the details. None of this would have been possible without the local expertise and ingenuity that go into developing recruitment processes that truly work. In this case, much of the University’s success rests on approaches developed at the faculty level. I am especially proud of, and grateful for, the work of HT’s recruitment coordinator, Anna Kvist. When I look at the central template for the next round of university‑wide assistant professor recruitments (to be launched this spring), I immediately recognise some of her unmistakably clear and consistently friendly formulations. Such texts are not like scientific papers with a clearly identified author; they are assembled by drawing on best practices. But even then, the authors and editors behind those practices matter a great deal. Thank you, Anna! Together, we will continue to refine our model for recruiting top talent to the HT Faculties and Lund University. I also want to thank the external experts who took on the task of identifying the top applicants (Folke Tersman, Birgitta Svensson, Ingela Nilsson, Petri Ylikoski , Professor Dawn Knight). It has been a pleasure working with you, and I can only begin to appreciate the hard work you invested. The same goes for our working groups, led by Torbjörn Ahlström and Tomas Persson.
Johannes
