ReseaRch Quality assuRance foR the futuRe a ... - Lund University

Panel 5 – BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE
It also can be mentioned that a few staff members at the Department are
actively engaged in the international scientific community as speakers at
international conferences, and in assignments to research councils and
assignments as members of editorial boards in international journals.
The number of doctoral theses produced within the Department of
Media and Communication in 2002–2007 was seven monographs, i.e.
around one per year as an average. The number is not high, but must
be considered ‘normal’ given the size of the academic staff and the
limited number of employed doctoral student. The monograph format
also means that there will be published fewer scientific articles than
in departments with dissertations based on a collection of published
articles.
Assessment: ‘very good’, but also with examples of research of ‘excellent’
standard.
3.4 Collaboration
The small size of the department limits the research possibilities and of
course increases the need for national and international cooperation. The
Department seem to be conscious of this and has participated in one
comparative study of Young People, the Internet and Civic Participation
(funded by the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme) and has established a
broad national research project about Media and Women’s Health Issues.
In these areas the assessment is ‘very good’.
3.5 Research activity and teaching
The publications of the academic staff are actively used in the
Department’s courses and teaching. The Department is also involved
in teaching/courses with other units and departments, among them the
Journalism programme, Gender Studies and the Sociology of Law. These
multi-discipline activities document the strength of the Department;
however, they are at the same time very demanding. The planned organisational
integration with journalism/press studies will possibly sharpen
the resource conflict between teaching and research.
The background documents give no information of student essays/articles
written within existing research projects. The lack of postdoc positions
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