University of Malmö

University of Malmö

At Malmö University, research and education shall be innovative, international and boundary-crossing and safeguard the strengths and properties that characterise the university. Malmö University contributes to a sustainable and more equal society through research-based knowledge, critical reflection and readiness to act.

Malmö University is founded on the human, democratic and academic values that have emerged from the ideals of an open society, freedom of speech and critical thinking. Malmö University provides high quality education and research through which, in collaboration with other societal actors, we create, share and disseminate knowledge to understand, explain and develop society. At Malmö University, the particularities and traditions of the different disciplines are respected and given the opportunity to be clearly expressed.
The overarching goals for the university is:
  • Long-term, nationally and internationally outstanding research which, together with doctoral education, constitutes one third of the university’s activities.
  • Education grounded in research, in terms of teaching methods as well as subject matter, which provides the conditions for inclusive and student-active life-long learning.
  • Strong, coherent and boundary-crossing international academic environments in which education, research and collaboration are integrated.
Malmö University is a quite young university celebrating 20 years in 2018. Since the beginning we have been actively working with widening participation, meaning that we recruit students from a non-traditional university background, through different actions and interventions. We are always seeking new ways to improve and develop our work with widening participation and constantly finding new ways. In order to give proper support to these student groups our student service has had to work more actively than many other student service offices´ in Sweden. This has given us a lot of experience and even on a European level we are considered a success story.
At the faculty of Learning and Society Malmö University teach becoming teachers for all kind of educations. At the institution of SKI, Society, Culture and Identity students study subjects in social science and humanities. Within the institution lies the project to construct the annual national test in history, as well. The test is performed by approximately 25 000 students in the compulsory school´s last year. The test is supposed to be digital in 2023, and this involves a lot of planning and testing.
At the institution there is a vivid research environment:
  • In history didactics research centers around history teaching and assessment, historical thinking, history and moral and younger students perceptions of history and time. In the research environment, there is also research with an interest in issues concerning cultural heritage and the use of history. This is about how history is produced, communicated and received in educational contexts, as well as in society at large.
  • There is also social and cultural history research with a focus on, among other things, social and political movements, youth and popular culture. This is characterized by an effort to write history “from below” in order to make the perspectives of previously marginalized groups visible. In this context, oral history plays an important role. The research environment is characterized by an interest in issues of ethnicity, generation, gender, class and transnationality. By putting these in a change perspective, new knowledge can be created about multicultural contexts and globalization processes in our time.
University of Helsinki