Dear KS colleagues and staff,

I hope you all had a nice summer and were able to spend the time in a way you enjoyed. I would like to welcome you all back to work – even if it most likely will be from home.

Many of us in Academia find the beginning of the autumn semester particularly stimulating, filled with the spirits and juices of life! However, things are not as they used to be even though there are more students and teachers at Niagara now than last September.

In the building there is an exhibition within the project Öppna Malmö, led by the City of Malmö, to show this beautiful city’s many faces. Read more about it here.
The exhibition is exposed in several of our buildings, with portrays of some of our researchers.

An exhibition cannot substitute meetings in real life. Right now we do not know how the pandemic will develop. Some things we do know: The more people get vaccinated, the less the covid virus spreads. Perhaps you have also heard the reports from Intensive Care at different hospitals, that most of their patients have not been vaccinated. Let us hope that the vaccine rate keeps growing, so that we can meet more frequently at Niagara in October, as long as we remember to wash our hands and keep distance.

October is also the time for Malmö University’s Academic Celebration week, starting on Monday 11 October and ending with the Akademisk högtid on 15 October. The celebration was cancelled last year, but it has recently been decided that it will be arranged this year, however in a very restricted form. There will soon be more information on this!

Let me continue with some news: I would like to send my congratulations to Annika Olsson, who has been appointed as the new KS representative in Rådet för globalt engagemang and the Chair of KS Internationella rådet. Annika is docent in Comparative Literature and prefekt at K3. And thank you, Magnus Ericson, Dr of political science and prefekt at GPS, for your long and professional mission to carry these questions for KS until now.

Yet another change: Bitr. professor Anders Wigerfelt’s (GPS) mission as dekanråd recently ended and I would like to thank you, Anders, for your contribution in different and difficult questions over the years.

Ola Jingryd at US is the new main safety representative (huvudarbetsmiljöombud) of the University. Congratulations to this important role. And speaking about working environment – there is still a vacancy for a GPS representative!

I would like to remind you that the University Board has given our vice-chancellor the mission to start the process of producing a renewed university strategy. From KS
Ann-Charlotte Lyvall, US, and Sayaka Osanami Törngren, GPS, have been appointed for the strategy group to take the thoughts and ideas of KS further – good luck with this work! On September 10 at 09:15 the Vice-chancellor, Deputy vice-chancellor and University director will visit the Faculty to talk about the development of Malmö university and to listen to our comments.

You have been invited by Outlook but will find the link to the meeting once again here:

https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/66272330022

WELCOME BACK to a new semester which starts as the old one ended – and I am excited about how the future will be!

Kind regards

Rebecka Lettevall

Dean