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

Panel 1 – law
researchers have benefited from and actively contributed to the REUNA
network of Nordic legal history. They are also busy establishing contacts
of their own. Some of the senior researchers are extremely well connected
with European and even US colleagues through various projects
and networks, such as the European Consortium of State and Church
(Milan), Religion in the 21st century (Copenhagen) and Nordic Legal
Maps in Transition (Lund). National collaboration exists as well. The
well-established international and local, interdisciplinary contacts to the
theologians deserve a special mention.
Many of the projects in which that the Lund historians are involved are of
an interdisciplinary nature, involving colleagues from various branches of
positive law as well as from comparative law, sociology of law and theology.
What is particularly praiseworthy and exemplary is that the seniors
have managed to involve the doctoral students in their networks.
5. Research Activity and Teaching
The Faculty has paid specific attention to researcher training and conducted
an assessment of it in 2004. The assessment came to the conclusion
that researcher training should aim at creating a pool of researchers who
would be qualified applicants for professorial chairs and positions as
university lecturers in the future. This would presuppose a higher amount
of doctoral students, with the consequence of more of the teachers’ time
required for the supervision of them.
The teaching load of some of the associate professors amounts to 80 % of
their total working time. This is evidently too much and leaves practically
no time for meaningful research. Although it is in principle possible to
“buy out” time for research by acquiring external grants, this option is
not available to all concerned.
As regards the substance of undergraduate teaching, the necessity of providing
future lawyers with a comprehensive legal education restricts the
possibility of immediate links between teaching and ongoing research.
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