The blog was an instant success in its niche and soon also became popular in wider circles, both within and outside academia. This process accelerated further when the blog was published in book form in April 2020. Within a month, readers of the book wanted to know when it would be translated into English so they could share it with academics who didn’t read Swedish. As a result of their insistence, the book got translated by Rikard Ehnsiö and published as: A Year of Academic Writing: Experiences and Methods for Early Career Reseachers in early 2021. Me? I’m blown away!
The reason I started the blog in the first place was because I wanted to bring some of the international academic blogosphere to Swedish academia. Throughout the 2010s, I have been an avid reader of Inger Mewburn’s The Thesis Whisperer, Pat Thomson’s Patter, Tseen Khoo and Jonathan O’Donnell’s The Research Whisperer, Karen Kelsky’s The Professor Is In, Raul Pacheco-Vegas blog, the columns of Kerry Ann Rockquemore and David D. Perlmutter and many others. In addition, I have been a voracious reader of academic writing literature, career and productivity literature, the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. In these pursuits, I depart from most of my colleagues. While the above names and venues are familiar to many international scholars – most Swedish academics have never heard of them.
However, in the Anglophone academic conversation, the Swedish way of academic life is also absent. That is obviously true for most academic systems operating differently from the US system. For example, all PhD positions in Sweden are fully funded for four years. Hence, the mounting debt issue is a non-issue here. In addition, there is no established tenure track system with institutionalized mobility and certainly no spousal hires. This makes for a very different career landscape. Additionally, the possibilities for non-faculty members to attract external funding are – at least in my home discipline of history – quite good. Thus, a research career can follow many different paths.
The reason I started the blog in the first place was because I wanted to bring some of the international academic blogosphere to Swedish academia. Throughout the 2010s, I have been an avid reader of Inger Mewburn’s The Thesis Whisperer, Pat Thomson’s Patter, Tseen Khoo and Jonathan O’Donnell’s The Research Whisperer, Karen Kelsky’s The Professor Is In, Raul Pacheco-Vegas blog, the columns of Kerry Ann Rockquemore and David D. Perlmutter and many others. In addition, I have been a voracious reader of academic writing literature, career and productivity literature, the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. In these pursuits, I depart from most of my colleagues. While the above names and venues are familiar to many international scholars – most Swedish academics have never heard of them.
However, in the Anglophone academic conversation, the Swedish way of academic life is also absent. That is obviously true for most academic systems operating differently from the US system. For example, all PhD positions in Sweden are fully funded for four years. Hence, the mounting debt issue is a non-issue here. In addition, there is no established tenure track system with institutionalized mobility and certainly no spousal hires. This makes for a very different career landscape. Additionally, the possibilities for non-faculty members to attract external funding are – at least in my home discipline of history – quite good. Thus, a research career can follow many different paths.
Against this background, I hope that this blog will offer an international audience genuine insight into a different way of academic life. Much will be recognizable, but some things might seem strange. For example, how academic life operates in a society where parental responsibilities are often shared somewhat equally, where paid parental leave amounts to years away from research (for both women and men) and where welfare state arrangements provide basic social security, medical services and pension schemes.
To be sure, there are many problems in Swedish society and academia. But they differ in important ways from those experienced elsewhere. Hence, I hope that my account will make for interesting comparisons and conversations. Moreover, I hope that the blog will be directly useful for the large group of non-Swedish researchers pursuing their career in Swedish academia.
The English version of the blog is published here with a two year delay, from February 1, 2021 to February 1, 2022. During the Swedish academic year, it is updated every Monday 07.30, sometimes more often.
The book, A Year of Academic Writing: Experiences and Methods for Early Career Researchers (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2021) can be bought from Adlibris, Bokus or Studentlitteraturs webshop.
If you are interested in a review copy of the blogbook please contact my publisher Caroline Boussard at: caroline.boussard@studentlitteratur.se
The monograph, The Environmental Turn in Postwar Scandinavia: A New History of Knowledge (translated by Arabella Childs), will be published by Manchester University Press/Lund University Press in mid-2021.
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