The investment in centres of excellence enables new research fields to emerge. The new centres will offer programme activities within an overarching thematic area, and give researchers from different established research disciplines the opportunity to work there for short or long periods. The overarching goal is for the centres to contribute to developing ground-breaking research approaches.
The Swedish Research Council will contribute 434 million SEK in total in funding to the centres during 2024–2028. Each centre of excellence will receive 4–6 million SEK per year.
Added value is created when research is carried out in well-functioning, strong and creative research environments. The concentration of resources creates a critical mass, where new collaboration clusters generate new research questions and approaches. Our centres of excellence lay the foundation for risk-taking and creative thinking that together with big ambitions can contribute to innovative and ground-breaking research.
– Katarina Bjelke, Director General of the Swedish Research Council
15 centres of excellence at nine higher education institutions
Brief information about the different centres is shown below, divided up according to the primary research fields.
Humanities and social sciences
The processes of nature are ever more affected by us humans and our societies. This applies at all levels – from the atomic to the planetary – and the effects will remain for a very long time and impact on history. The centre will function as a hub for research and education, using the concept of anthropocene and the new and emerging understanding of the relationship between humans and the environment as the starting point.
Project leader: Sabine Höhler
Higher education institution: Royal Institute of Technology (KTH)
An interdisciplinary centre for research in all aspects of human development during the last 10 000 years. The centre links together the three research fields of archaeology, genetics, and linguistics, which all investigate different aspects of human development. By bringing together the different types of data and methods of the research fields, we can develop a rounded picture of early human history – in terms of language, culture, and genetic development.
Project leader: Mattias Jakobsson
Higher education institution: Uppsala University
Global collaboration is necessary to manage transboundary problems, such as climate change, virus pandemics, financial crises, and military conflicts. At the same time, the concept is increasingly being challenged by various actors. The centre shall research the drivers behind the contentiousness, the processes that challenge global collaboration, and the consequences of global collaboration being called into question.
Project leader: Jonas Tallberg
Higher education institution: Stockholm University
Read more about the centre on Stockholm University's website
External link.
Interview with the project leader Jonas Tallberg and Lisa Dellmuth.
A centre for research in the new research field of computational social science (CSS). The goal of the centre is to locate Sweden at the international research frontier in CSS, and to be an educational centre and a central node for CSS-oriented research teams and institutes around the world.
Project leader: Peter Hedström
Higher education institution: Linköping University
Read more about the centre on Linköping University’s website External link.
A platform and meeting place for multidiscplinary collaboration in research into the period around 750–1050 CE. By going beyond the traditional limits of the research field, the centre will highlight the ethnic and cultural diversity that characterised the world in the Viking age, and thereby produce a nuanced picture of the period.
Project leader: Neil Price
Higher education institution: Uppsala University
Read more about the centre on Uppsala University's website External link.
Artistic research
A centre for art and political imagination and studies of how artistic practice shape how the political domain is visualised and represented today. The research environment is a collaboration between HDK-Valand and the Royal Institute of Art, and entails the establishment of a competence centre for artistic research – the first of its kind in Sweden.
Project leader: Mick Wilson
Higher education institution: University of Gothenburg
Medicine and health
A multi-discplinary centre with expert knowledge of everything from basal immunology of white blood cells, such as T and NK cells, to clinical production and treatment with modified cells. This environment will enable understanding and further development of cell-based cancer treatments.
Project leader: Yenan Bryceson
Higher education institution: Karolinska Institutet
An interdisciplinary centre for research into the chemistry of life. Chemistry and interactions between molecules direct life through uninterrupted chemical processes. All types of molecules are involved in these processes, but research often focuses only on DNA/RNA, proteins/enzymes, or metabolites/lipids. This centre will combine knowledge in the individual areas to understand the chemistry of life in depth.
Project leader: Ingela Lanekoff
Higher education institution: Uppsala University
Read more about the center on Uppsala University's website External link.
The centre will study the underlying mechanisms of why people often act in ways that cause negative consequences, despite knowledge of these. The examples range from behaviours that lead to damage to the individual themselves (such as substance abuse and dependency), to such that damage humanity as a whole, for example by making climate change worse.
Project leader: Markus Heilig
Higher education institution: Linköping University
Read more about the centre on Linköping University's website External link.
Natural and engineering sciences
An interdisciplinary centre that brings together researchers in theoretical physics and geometry (mathematics). Both these fields have developed in a radical way over the last few decades, thanks to increased exchange of ideas between the disciplines. The centre will facilitate this exchange and the development of international theoretical research.
Project leader: Tobias Ekholm
Higher education institution: Uppsala University
Read more about the centre on Uppsala University’s website External link.
A multidisciplinary complexity centre for research questions about how living systems react to stress. Examples of systems are the accelerating loss of biodiversity, the reduction in crop productivity, and the increase in antibiotic resistance.
Project leader: Martin Rosvall
Higher education institution: Umeå University
The centre will be carrying out interdisciplinary research to increase the understanding of how extreme weather impacts on our society, today and in the future. The ambition is to educate a new generation of researchers about the effects of extreme weather, and to contribute to a resilient society. The centre is a collaboration between Uppsala University, Lund University, och Research Institutes of Sweden.
Project leader: Gabriele Messori
Higher education institution: Uppsala University
An interdisciplinary centre for research in biomolecular systems. Both detailed and general knowledge is needed to understand the body’s healthy functions and disease-causing processes, and to develop ways of preventing or curing diseases. A lot of research today is about a detailed way of describing which molecules are interacting in a given system or process. At the centre, we want to supplement this specific knowledge with a general approach, and to search for and clarify general principles that are common to different biomolecular systems.
Project leader: Emma Sparr
Higher education institution: Lund University
An interdisciplinary centre for basic research into the dark contents of the universe – from elementary particles to the largest physical structures in the universe. Despite dark matter and dark energy together forming 95% of the cosmic composition, we still know nothing about their natures. At the centre, we will be constructing the most sensitive particle detectors and designing astronomical observation programmes to become a world-leading research environment in the field.
Project leader: Ariel Goobar
Higher education institution: Stockholm University
An internationally leading centre for both research and training of PhD students in the field of integrated metaphotonics. This refers to components with advanced optical functions and characteristics that are expected to be useful within a large number of applications, ranging from optical connections in data centres to quantum simulations, for example.
Project leader: Viktor Torres Comany
Higher education institution: Chalmers University of Technology
Read more about the centre on Chalmers’ website External link.
How do you create a successful research environment?
Interviews with the project leaders of two of the centers of excellence.
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