European awakening: Discursive Europeanisation and academic embrace of Europe at Lund University,1985–1995

Introduction

For a long time, Sweden stood outside postwar Western European integration. The neutral country in the North, which had been spared the horrors of two world wars and could build a prosperous social-democratic welfare society in the decades after 1945, was sceptical of the growing European project (Malmborg, 1994; Westberg, 2003). However, in the late 1980s, and even more so in the eventful years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, many Swedish convictions were reconsidered, and a new political, ideological and economic order took shape. The first years of the 1990s, marked by economic crisis and the emergence of a new world order, saw an intense debate on Swedish EU membership. Opinion was divided, but in November 1994 a majority voted to join the European Union, which took effect on January 1, 1995 (Gustavsson, 1998; Stråth, 1993).

This article analyses the Europeanisation of a single Swedish university, Lund University, during these transformative years. More specifically, I will trace how a discourse of Europe emerged at this university from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, that is, how vague perceptions and more developed ideas about Europe manifested themselves at a time when the continent’s research and higher education landscape was undergoing major changes (see the ‘Introduction’ to this special issue). ¹

Thus, the focus of this study is Lund University. It was a large, comprehensive Scandinavian university that was among the most prestigious in its country and had fairly extensive international connections, particularly in certain parts of medicine and science. At the same time, Lund was geographically located about 500 km from the capital Stockholm with its parliament, ministries and central governmental and scientific institutions. On the other hand, it was considerably closer to Copenhagen and not so far from the northern parts of continental Europe. There is thus good reason to assume that the geographical location may have had an impact on the view of European cooperation (Broberg and Dunér, 2017; Fehrman et al., 2005). Another factor to consider was regional specificities. During the decade in question, Lund University was the undisputed academic centre of southern Sweden. This part of the country had gone through a difficult economic period since the mid-1970s, with rising unemployment and profound structural changes, including a shipbuilding crisis and industrial closures. Partly as a response to the harsh economic situation, new initiatives had been taken to stimulate the transition to a knowledge-based post-industrial economy. A clear example of this was the Ideon research village in Lund, which had been founded in 1983, inspired by international models, not least from Silicon Valley (Bengtsson, 2003; Melander, 2006; Westling, 2001).

The main source that will be used in this study is the Lunds Universitet Meddelar, usually abbreviated as LUM. It had started in 1968 as a newsletter aimed at university employees but gradually grew in scope and became more of a kind of magazine aimed at both the staff and the surrounding community. During the 1980s and 1990s, it was usually published between 15 and 20 issues per year. Providing news about research and education at Lund University was a central task for LUM, but it also published articles on international trends, thematic sections on topical issues and discussions about the future of the university. Although LUM to some extent was a platform for different voices and opinions, its purpose was not critical investigative journalism but rather to be a kind of mouthpiece for an official university policy (Mansén, 2017). It goes without saying that a broader range of source material – meeting minutes, interviews, consultation responses from faculties and departments – could have provided a more complete and multifaceted picture of the processes of Europeanisation. However, for those who, like me, want to capture general self-images and conceptions associated with Europe among leading academic figures in Lund, LUM is an appropriate source.

Internationalisation in the mid-1980s

In the first postwar decades, international student exchanges were limited, and education remained essentially a national affair. During the 1970s, however, internationalisation issues were more systematically put on the agenda in Sweden. The country’s major export firms were increasingly operating abroad and there was a general need for more internationally oriented Swedes. A number of new programmes were therefore established in Lund with this focus, including an international business programme and various types of area studies. During the 1980s, international travel by university teachers and researchers at Lund increased sharply. About 85% of the trips were made to the USA and about 10 Nordic and Western European countries, while Eastern Europe and the rest of the world were visited considerably less often (Cederlund, 1990, 1995; Dunér, 2017).

This drive for internationalisation was noticeable in LUM during the first half of the 1980s. A snapshot from 1983 illustrates what the international contact patterns of Lund University could look like at that time. A number of different collaborations with universities, research groups and institutes in Western Europe and North America stand out; CERN in Switzerland, for example, featured frequently. Another prominent international feature of the magazine was the contacts with developing countries and the university’s new Arab World Study Programme (LUM, 5 1983a; LUM, 5 1983b). There were also contacts with the Eastern Bloc, and one article reported on exchanges and cooperation between Lund and in Greifswald in the GDR (LUM, 20 1983).

In other words, it is clear that Lund University wanted to be part of a wider world, but there is no trace of Europeanisation in the sense of a coherent process or a vision of being part of a larger European cooperation. On the other hand, a more general internationalisation was a leitmotif for the university during these years. This became evident in a major article in which two of the most prominent actors at the university in the 1980s were interviewed, Vice-Chancellor Håkan Westling and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Kjell Å Modéer.

Both of them had taken up their new posts in 1983 and so this year marked a new stage in the history of Lund University. There is therefore reason to delve into the more programmatic statements they made this year. Håkan Westling, professor of clinical physiology, argued in an interview that younger research talents must be allowed to ‘go out and make contacts with other parts of the world’, but he also said that it was easy for it to become just general statements in internationalisation. For more senior researchers, there was funding to go to conferences and research trips. ‘What we really need is to be able to give the young, promising researcher the opportunity to go to a physics laboratory in Cambridge or to a geological laboratory in the United States and receive their salary from Sweden. Today this is practically impossible. We also need to be able to invite competent researchers here’. His message was clear: ‘International exchange is the best remedy against spiritual inbreeding’ (LUM, 12 1983: 14).

Deputy Vice-Chancellor Kjell Å Modéer was also passionate about internationalisation. A professor of legal history, he had long cultivated contacts with Nordic and German colleagues but would expand his international networks in the 1980s (Modéer, 2019). When Modéer was interviewed, he emphasised that Lund’s geographical location and its status as the most comprehensive university in the Nordic region gave it unique opportunities. ‘Lund, which is a natural centre not only for Nordic researchers, can also function as such outwardly, towards Europe and other continents’, he concluded (LUM, 12 1983: 19).

Internationalisation was thus a watchword for the newly appointed leaders. Westling saw it as a condition for the intellectual survival of the university, but did not hide the fact that there were obstacles. Modéer, for his part, explicitly linked to an old idea that Lund’s geographical setting was one of its distinguishing features: far from the seat of Swedish central power, closer to Copenhagen and the Continent (Dunér, 2017; Fehrman et al., 2005). According to Modéer (LUM, 12 1983), Lund could take advantage of this geographical position to transcend the limitations of the nation-state and act as a bridgehead to other worlds, not least in Europe.

In the following years, 1984–1986, the internationalisation ambitions were reflected in various ways. In September 1984, for example, the study counsellors at Lund University organised for the first time an entire day devoted to studying abroad. At the same time, it was clear that there were problems because different countries had different educational structures and degree requirements (LUM, 12 1984: 14). Also students coming to Sweden could feel that it was a foreign system. Therefore, to help foreign students in Lund, the university, together with the student union, started a pilot project, the Foreign Student Reception Service (LUM, 13 1984: 30).

In the mid-1980s, LUM continued report on various international activities and initiatives to promote internationalisation. However, all was not well. One problem was that Lund, despite its size as the largest university in the Nordic region, lacked a proper congress hall, which was an obstacle to large-scale international interaction (LUM, 12 1986: 2). Another problem was the lack of a professional organisation to guide visiting researchers and students coming to Lund (LUM, 11 1986: 10). In other words, despite the calls for internationalisation, there was no infrastructure or professional organisation to receive foreign students and researchers. In its own self-image, Lund was generally considered to be particularly well placed to pursue successful internationalisation efforts, both by virtue of its broad academic activities and its location. However, no geographical area seemed to be prioritised, and no strong Europeanisation narrative was in place during these years in the mid-1980s. But change was coming.

The breakthrough of a European discourse

The year 1987 stands out as a turning point in the history of Lund University’s internationalisation. The overall change can be described as a movement from a general effort to encourage and promote international contacts to wholeheartedly embracing and becoming an integral part of an emerging European cooperation in research and higher education. Not everything changed overnight, but a formation of a new European discourse took place in 1987. It was to be reinforced and given concrete expression in the years thereafter, but there is reason to look into this year in more detail.

At the beginning of 1987, the general internationalisation enthusiasm of the previous years was still very much in evidence, but European references were becoming more common. For example, one article was devoted to the new research bill. When Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson presented it, he emphasised the need for international cooperation and mentioned, among other things, the Eureka project, the aim of which was to coordinate and stimulate research in Europe (LUM, 3 1987: 2).

During this year, a partly new tone could be heard in LUM. It was as if more and more people were raising their voices and demanding that the university took further steps towards a substantial internationalisation, as if non-binding phraseology was no longer enough. For example, the historian Göran Rystad who as the new dean of the Faculty of Humanities, was quoted in an interview. The previous year, the faculty had organised a public event/day entitled ‘The Humanities Across Borders’ and in 1987 the theme was ‘The Humanities in Lund – Window to the World’. The choice of topics was an important signal, a statement of intent by humanities scholars that they felt they belonged to an international research community, according to Rystad who himself had worked quite a lot on both European and North American history. He described internationalisation as one of the most important trends at Lund University in recent years but it was not progressing fast enough and there was a lack of a major effort, a broader framework within which the ambitions could be realised. This sense of impatience, pent up for years, was an important factor as the university’s management and an increasing number of Lund academics embraced deeper European educational and research cooperation. In other words, ‘Europe’ became a solution to a problem (LUM, 9 1987: 3).

In an article at the end of 1987, an important piece of news was announced. ‘Lund becomes an EC university!’ was the headline. Lund was the first university in Sweden to benefit from what was described as the EC countries’ ‘dynamic investment in research and education’. The Vice-Chancellor Håkan Westling said this was an opportunity not to be missed: ‘We must try to ride the wave here. Otherwise, we risk becoming an intellectual appendix – which you can both have and be without’ (LUM, 12 1987: 3). The day before the magazine went to press, Westling had participated in a meeting in Ghent and Brussels that brought together well over a hundred rectors. The background was that ‘the powerful and financially strong EC market’, as it was called, was prepared to let in a non-member provided that it cooperated with an EC country in the field of research and education. And it was just such a necessary agreement that Lund had managed to conclude – with the neighbouring university in Copenhagen. Westling emphasised how extremely important it was that Lund, and by extension Sweden, became part of this EC offensive. There were great human resources, financial resources and dynamism in the ambitions to research and develop, he said (LUM, 12 1987: 3).

One of the main topics of the conference in Belgium was academic mobility. Westling explained that one of the ambitions of the new Erasmus programme was that every tenth EC student in 1992 would spend one or two semesters in another European country. Thus, student exchanges were also given high priority alongside research collaboration (LUM, 12 1987: 3). The same article also introduced a person who was characterised as ‘Lund University’s own EC man’, Inge Brinck. He was a mathematician by training and a teacher at the university’s Faculty of Engineering but he had emphasised the importance of international outlooks and contacts early on. Above all, Brinck had promoted the idea that internationalisation must include the students, not just the researchers, and in this context played a key role in establishing exchange programmes between Lund and universities in France, Switzerland and West Germany. For Brinck, it was important that researchers and students embraced the same movement towards Europe that the Swedish business community had begun to make recently (Johannesson et al., 2016; LUM, 12 1987: 3–4). ‘The academic world must not be left behind, especially as European cooperation must be strengthened in the face of US dominance in the scientific field’, Brinck argued (LUM, 12 1987: 4).

Similar European arguments also started to find their way into other articles. One piece, tellingly titled ‘Another LU step to keep up with Europe’, described how a first cohort of international economists with a French focus had spent a semester in Paris. Both students and programme directors testified to the professional and personal significance of spending time in France as part of their education, but there was another reason. ‘I also see a positive link to the European Communities’, said the teacher Christer Kedström and continued: ‘Very important EC bodies are located in French-speaking countries and since Sweden is not part of them and automatically receives information and knowledge – we are in even greater need of having Swedes in these countries, if we are not to be isolated from the rest of Europe’ (LUM, 12 1987: 3–4).

These statements from 1987 contained many of the essential elements of the Europeanisation discourse that was formed during these years. One basic message was that great things were happening in Europe, and it was of the utmost importance that Swedish higher education institutions, preferably with Lund at the forefront, did what they could to be part of these processes in order to benefit from the extensive resources. Otherwise, they risked being isolated. Lund University was particularly well placed to embrace this form of internationalisation. Denmark, being so close, could act as a springboard for reaching the Continent and the looming EC academic cooperation.

This European awakening at Lund must be seen in two broader contexts. The first, discussed in the introduction to this special issue, was the push by the EC institutions, through a series of initiatives, to create a common area of research and higher education, a process that accelerated under Jacques Delors’ first Commission in the second half of the 1980s. The second context was the national one. In the late 1980s, more and more Swedes saw in (Western) Europe the promise of freedom and renewal, while large parts of the private sector were convinced that an EC membership would open up new, lucrative markets for companies. By 1987, the proportion of supporters of Swedish membership had risen to around 40% and it continued in that direction. The peak was reached in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the general euphoria about Europe that was then taking hold: by late autumn of 1990, supporters accounted for about 70% and only 15% were opponents. It was at this time that the Social Democratic government announced its view that Sweden should pursue membership (Holmberg, 1996).

Europeanisation strengthens and stabilises

In the last years of the 1980s, the Europeanisation discourse became stronger but also more multifaceted. In general, LUM wrote much more about European topics than before, and Europe-related concepts became more and more frequent.

Nor was it only the rectors and deans who embraced Europe. Students also wanted to be part of this new movement. At the traditional 1 May celebrations in Lund in 1988, for example, the chairman of the student union, Per Ola Olsson, called for the university to develop its contacts with Europe. According to him, the internationalisation of education was a profile issue for Lund University, and it was also close to the student union’s heart. The exchange agreement with Copenhagen was therefore welcome and Olsson saw it as a continuation of the Scandinavism movement of the 19th century. There were also other agreements, and therefore the student union intended to publish, together with the university, a handbook of all the existing exchange agreements between Lund University and foreign universities. However, as Olsson pointed out in his speech to the Vice-Chancellor Westling, ‘we must move on, the future demands that we, within the framework of the universal society known as the academic, break the formal boundaries set by politics’ (LUM, 6 1988a: 2). He continued (LUM, 6 1988a: 2):

Because of these borders, Sweden has not been able to take part in the current European exchange programmes Erasmus and COMETT. We must critically monitor developments, be prepared and, when the opportunity arises, be able to jump on the European train without hesitation.

We jokingly say that Scania is not the southernmost part of Sweden but the northernmost part of Europe, and we must now take advantage of this unique intermediate position on the threshold of the Continent. We must be active in the Nordic student exchange programme NORDPLUS and we must conclude several European cooperation agreements and also concretize the existing ones.

Vice-Chancellor, every student dreams of studying at least one semester at a foreign university, and it is our duty to make this dream come true until the point where only the individual’s own will stops.

In line with the tradition, the Vice-Chancellor then responded to the President of the Student Union. Håkan Westling agreed that more concrete action was needed on the internationalisation of education, but he also said that Lund University had made particular efforts on this issue this year. Among other things, a new post had been set up for contacts with Copenhagen and opportunities for student exchanges with West Germany had been improved. ‘The intention is’, explained Westling, ‘that Lund should become Northern Europe’s foremost outpost towards Scandinavia and, through its relations with Copenhagen and in other ways, be a pioneer in European cooperation’ (LUM, 6 1988b: 2).

In the solemn setting of the 1 May speeches in Lund, the President of the Student Union and the Vice-Chancellor of the university thus formulated a common vision. The young Olsson expressed an impatience that he and his generation felt. For them, it was important to realise that internationalisation was the way into the future. He used one of the most typical metaphors of modernity – the train not to be missed – to describe the situation. The young generation dreamed of being part of the international context, which was more and more understood as ‘Europe’. Westling supported the same idea but emphasised that his own university was on the right track. Concrete steps were taken, and Lund was at the forefront of the move towards Europe.

Later that year, Westling felt the excitement of Europe. In September 1988, hundreds of university rectors gathered for a week of festivities in Bologna to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the city’s university. At the meeting, 388 university rectors signed the Magna Charta Universitatum, and Westling was one of them. This document, usually described as a kind of university bill of rights, set out the fundamental academic principles. In an interview, Westling described it as ‘a fantastic celebration’. He wholeheartedly endorsed the principles of the declaration and said the reason the response was so strong was that universities around the world were facing similar problems. ‘In Eastern Europe’, he said, ‘they are shaking off political control’ and in Western Europe they want to reduce dependence on the rest of society, especially economic forces outside the university (LUM, 11 1988: 5).

But 1988 was not just a year of ceremonial speeches and grand declarations. Closer European cooperation was now also beginning to find concrete expression in Lund. One example was the so-called ESPRIT programme, a major investment in information technology that was part of the EC’s first Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. Sweden had been excluded from the first phase of the programme, which had been running since 1984, but through great efforts on the Swedish side, it had now gained access, although without receiving direct funding from the EC. ‘It is very important for us in Sweden to keep close contact with what is happening in Europe’, emphasised one of the participants, Lars Philipson, professor of computer system engineering in Lund, and continued: ‘The investments made within the EC are so much greater than those we can afford that it would be fatal to end up outside’ (LUM, 14 1988: 5).

At the same time, discussions intensified on how Swedish universities could achieve international student exchanges even though Sweden was not a member of the EC. In the spring of 1988, the Nordic Council decided to establish a kind of Erasmus programme for the Nordic countries, Nordplus, which the student Per Ola Olsson mentioned in his speech (LUM, 10 1988). It was a step along the way, but it was clear that the larger European education market was the priority. LUM devoted a report to Danish universities, and the message was clear: Denmark’s membership of the EU meant that it could participate in Erasmus and this had made Danish universities attractive to academics from the rest of the Nordic region. Overall, European cooperation was seen as valuable for the internationalisation of Danish universities and there was no doubt that they had an advantage over the other Nordic countries. Since Swedish higher education institutions could not participate in Erasmus, the Swedish Agency for Higher Education had set up a so-called Europe Group under the leadership of Håkan Westling. The group’s task was to work with one country at a time to build up research and education contacts (LUM, 10 1988; LUM 8 1988).

In other words, ‘Europe’ was a buzzword that appeared in more and more contexts in 1988. It was a promising concept that carried expectations of new opportunities in the future. Interest in Europe increased even more in 1989, a year that was to prove so transformative for the Continent as a whole. One concrete manifestation was the creation of a new position as an international secretary at Lund University. The position was given to Christina Söderhjelm McKnight, whose duties included assisting researchers, teachers and students who wanted to go abroad.

During the year, internationalisation ran like a red thread through LUM. Issue 4 had ‘Internationalisation’ as its theme, with a clear focus on Europe. It began with an interview with Inge Brinck, who in 1987 was appointed the ‘Swedish university’s EC ambassador’ and thus no longer worked only for Lund University. His task was to pave the way for cooperation and exchange agreements, primarily with the universities of the EC countries, ultimately to give Swedish students the opportunity to spend one or more semesters abroad. He highlighted West Germany as a priority partner in this context, where there was also a mutual interest in cooperation. Undeniably, however, there were obstacles. One was that knowledge of what was happening in the EC had to be better disseminated to Swedish higher education institutions; another problem was that Sweden only allocated three to four million kronor for European educational cooperation, a ‘ridiculously low’ sum in an international perspective (LUM, 4 1989: 5).

In the same thematic issue, LUM reported on a number of European initiatives involving students and teachers from Lund. One was an international humanities course in Roskilde that brought together students and teachers from a large number of European countries. Another was the intensified contacts with the old Swedish university in Greifswald. A third was a new agreement on teacher and student exchanges signed with the University of Utrecht, of particular value as the Dutch university was heavily committed to internationalisation and, thanks to the Erasmus programme, had been able to establish links with a range of European partner universities (LUM, 4 1989a; LUM, 4 1989b). However, not everything went well. LUM reported that a group of linguists returned from a trip to Tbilisi, upset and disappointed. They went there to organise a symposium and initiate collaborations with Georgian colleagues, but were met with harsh political repression and an occupied university. ‘It sounds so nice with internationalisation and agreements, but you have to be prepared to meet a different reality behind the nice formulations’, Professor Bengt Sigurd said (LUM, 6 1989: 14).

While these individual initiatives may have been important, the structural changes that began to emerge between the 1980s and 1990s probably had a more long-term impact. One was the targeted financial initiatives that were launched, albeit on a modest scale. For example, in 1989 the Swedish National Research Council decided to allocate special funding for Sweden to participate in the EC Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. Another change was the announcement in 1990 that the EC Council of Ministers had decided to open the Erasmus Programme to EFTA countries as well (LUM, 13 1990: 3).

At this time, Europe was in the midst of a radical transformation. The following year, the Soviet Union would be dissolved, and Sweden would submit its application for EU membership. But already in the late 1980s, a discursive Europeanisation had taken place at Lund University. In a larger perspective, it was a result of a gradual shift in the understanding of what internalisation could mean, in which Europeanisation became increasingly important, not least among leading academics and student representatives. In the following years, this discourse would be consolidated and translated into action.

The consolidation of the European discourse in the 1990s

A sign that the 1990s would be a decade of increased Europeanisation for Swedish universities was given in one of the first issues of LUM: ‘Cooperation with Europe on the rise’ was the headline of an article about a survey carried out by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It showed that cooperation between researchers in Sweden and the rest of Europe intensified and that Western Europe was Sweden’s most important scientific partner. ‘Contributing factors may be the increasing opening of EC’s research and development programmes to non-members and the growing interest in European research in Sweden’, according to the article (LUM, 2 1990: 10).

In the early 1990s, LUM repeatedly published articles highlighting the amplified investment in European cooperation or new European initiatives in research and higher education. These included, for example, funding for enhanced European cooperation announced in the Swedish Research Bill, details of the new EC Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development and the launch of the European Rectors’ Conference’s European Fellowship to promote academic exchange (LUM, 3 1990a: 4; LUM, 3 1990b: 21; LUM, 8 1990: 15). Readers of the journal during these years must have gotten the impression that much was going at a European level and that this was something that was also increasingly relevant to Swedish academics.

The interest in Europe was also emphasised graphically by the introduction of a special ‘EC box’ in LUM in 1991, with a picture of the 12 yellow stars of the European flag on a dark blue background. This box could be in the form of a page or a full spread where information with a European connection was published. Details of who from Lund had received funding for Erasmus trips were also printed, including where they were going and the amounts they had been awarded (LUM, 9 1991: 16). The following year, a further step towards formalisation was taken when the ‘Internatjournalen’ became a regular feature of the magazine. Initially, this section often dealt with foreign students who had come to Lund, but gradually it became more and more practically oriented towards EC/EU research grants and the opportunities available in the Framework Programmes. The European dimension was thus integrated as part of the continuous flow of information at the university.

All in all, it can be seen how the discourse of Europeanisation gained a stronger foothold at Lund University in the early 1990s and slowly became part of everyday academic life. During these years, a broader commitment to European issues could also be observed in LUM in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was a commitment that did not have its origins in the Western European cooperation within the EC, but it reinforced the general European sentiments at the university and contributed to a deeper Europeanisation.

An example of this was given in an article in early 1990. The political changes in the Soviet Union meant that Baltic physicists could now carry out experiments in Lund. For 10 years, an Estonian research group had specialised in ion crystals. The experiments were conducted at an accelerator in Novosibirsk, but it was difficult to get slots experiments. Another disadvantage was the considerable distance. Now that there were suddenly air connections between Tallinn and Stockholm, other possibilities opened up (LUM, 2 1990: 8).

The dramatic changes in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s also involved Swedish universities in a more tangible way. In an article, Ingemar Ståhl, professor of economics and a proponent of the Austrian school of economic thought, reported on a visit to the University of Vilnius just as Soviet tanks were rolling through the streets of Lithuania. Ståhl was pessimistic about the prospects for a rapid transition to a market economy; the Marxist-Leninist imprint was too deep among the academic colleagues he met. ‘Unfortunately, the lack of continuous international scientific exchange has led to the adoption of bad academic habits’, the Lund professor concluded. To achieve real change, he said, as many people as possible needed to be able to travel and stay at foreign universities, for example in Sweden. The alternative was for teachers and researchers to go to the Baltic States, which Ståhl himself intended to do in the coming year (LUM, 2 1991: 2–3).

A further example of active interest in the development of Eastern European universities became apparent at the end of 1991. At that time, LUM (13 1991: 14) announced that the government was preparing Swedish participation in the EC programme TEMPUS (Trans-European Scheme for University Studies). It was similar in structure to Erasmus and other EC programmes, but aimed to contribute to the development in Eastern Europe. Students and researchers from the east were given the opportunity to come to Western Europe. By stimulating collaborative projects and the emergence of new networks involving participants from both Eastern and Western Europe, universities would develop.

By the mid-1990s, interest in Eastern Europe seems to have waned – at least there were far fewer articles in LUM – and the focus shifted more clearly to EU issues. The engagement that had flared up after the fall of the Berlin Wall had nevertheless contributed to several new connections across the Baltic Sea and to Lund academics being exposed to Eastern European experiences (LUM, 12 1992: 12; LUM, 10 1993: 21; LUM, 4 1994: 8).

Implementing Europe: Opportunities, obstacles and concerns

In parallel with the major political drama in Europe, a more concrete Europeanisation of the university was taking place. The TEMPUS programme was one element in this process, but already the year before, in 1990, the EC’s Council of Ministers had decided to open the Erasmus programme also to EFTA countries. In the following years, European cooperation went from vision to action in Lund, an implementation process that brought new opportunities but also obstacles and concerns.

At the beginning of 1991, LUM (3 1991: 13) announced that the Erasmus agreement was in place. ‘Now the work begins in earnest!’ was the headline of the article. ‘Whatever one thinks of Sweden’s membership of the EC, it is obviously important for Swedish universities to be able to participate in the major European programmes for research and education’, stated Vice-Chancellor Håkan Westling. He was not worried that Swedish students would not do well during their studies abroad, but he was concerned about the adjustments needed to welcome international students to Lund, including housing and English-language courses. Another concern identified by Westling was the bureaucratic apparatus in Brussels, which ‘is said to be large and unwieldy’.

The article then turned into a fairly detailed practical instruction under the heading ‘How to apply!’. Christina McKnight, the university’s international secretary, explained how to go about it, including what programme areas were available, who should sign the application, how student scholarships were distributed, how courses could be equated, and all the things to consider. Many questions could arise for those who wanted to go to Europe, and McKnight’s advice was: ‘Call me, preferably between 8 and 9 a.m., on 109383, or go to your ‘international contact person’ (LUM, 3 1991: 13, 18). This is an example of what has been called a ‘Europeanisation through everyday practices’, indicating that these processes could unfold in a more mundane and implicit manner, whereby mindsets and frames of reference gradually were transformed due to various activities in everyday life (Brand et al., 2024).

There was a general concern that practical, bureaucratic and legal obstacles would hamper the Europeanisation efforts of the early 1990s. The concrete problems faced somewhat dampened the euphoria that otherwise pervaded. In another article from 1991, for example, the international secretary McKnight claimed that the reception of foreign students in Lund was poor. Although the international secretariat had been expanded to three people during the year, there was no organisation to welcome visiting students and give them hands-on help (LUM, 10 1991: 6–7).

McKnight returned in another article later in 1991 to say that the readiness to participate in the Erasmus programme was quite good. Most of Lund’s faculties had previous experience of exchanges and had made good progress in their preparations, for example by setting aside time for administrators to work on these issues. However, the faculties of education, the humanities and theology had some way to go and needed to find courses that would attract international students. Despite the relatively good preparedness, there was one major drawback: finances. Erasmus grants covered just over a third of the cost of the course, with the additional costs of accommodation and the administration of transferring grades (LUM, 11 1991: 5).

Another concern highlighted was the bureaucracy surrounding residence permits. The Swedish Immigration Board was portrayed as ‘a cumbersome clog’ that hindered internationalisation. ‘I don’t understand how we can manage internationalisation as long as we have an immigration office that works the way it does’, sighed Gunilla Frejd at Lund University’s admissions unit. There were many examples of how the migration processes dragged on, from international teachers who did not receive their work permits to guest students who could not be told in time whether they were admitted (LUM, 10 1991: 9).

A further difficulty had been mentioned by Westling in connection with the signing of the Erasmus agreement: the slow pace of European bureaucracy. It was an experience that others had also made. Lars Anderberg, a senior lecturer at the technical faculty, had become chairman of the COMETT project Eurobuild, whose aim was to facilitate cooperation between industry and universities in the construction sector, including the development of a common accreditation system. However, it was not easy, he noted (LUM, 12 1991: 14): ‘Correspondence from Brussels is slow and impersonal. A working group should be set up at the university to draw up manuals for this [. . .] And preferably half a secretarial post for things like keeping track of telephone numbers and filling in forms’.

Anderberg and others (LUM, 7 1993a; LUM, 7 1993b) formulated a trope that was not only used by Swedes but had a much broader resonance: the European Union was viewed as a bureaucratic colossus that made many people instinctively shy away from (Vogler, 2023); ‘Brussels’ was, as Enzensberger (2011) later would call it, ‘a gentle monster’.

There were, in other words, many practical obstacles to the effective incorporation of Lund University into the new European Community and the realisation of its full potential. In general, these problems were primarily regarded as temporary and not as fundamental obstacles to the desirable internationalisation. However, one person who expressed strong fundamental concerns about the development was Ulf Teleman, professor of Swedish. ‘A new Swedish upper class is likely to emerge’, he predicted in an interview (LUM, 5 1992: 6–7) and argued: ‘They will marry into the European elite and give their children the great European languages with their mother’s milk. Swedish will become less and less of a native language for them’. English was already displacing Swedish as the language of science and business, and with increased Europeanisation the scope of Swedish would be further limited, he argued. For universities, it will be important to invest more in foreign languages, primarily English, German and French. In his further argumentation, Teleman adopted a class perspective. Many of the best students will go to prestigious foreign universities and enter into ‘mixed marriages’ across national borders. ‘They may celebrate midsummer and eat herring and potatoes, but soon they will feel primarily European. And it probably won’t be long before these upper-class Swedes have English, French and German as their mother tongue’, he said. The result will be an initial widening of the class divide in Sweden, but in the next stage the lower classes will demand access to the foreign languages and emulate their behaviour of the elite. In this way, Swedish may be reduced to a home language, losing its public function and eventually no longer being written.

Teleman’s pessimistic future scenario was unusual, however. On the contrary, it is notable that very little of the opposition to the EC/EU in Swedish society in the first half of the 1990s was reflected in LUM. Whether this was due to the fact that a pro-European line was completely dominant at the university or that critical voices were not allowed to be heard cannot be deduced from the current source material. What is clear, however, is that ‘Europe’ was essentially seen as a promise from the point of view of the Lund academics. To the extent that there was any threat, it was rather that Sweden in general and Lund University in particular would not seize the opportunity resolutely enough and jump on the European train that was now rapidly accelerating.

On the road to the European Union

On 1 July 1992, Boel Flodgren, Professor of Business Law, became the new Vice-Chancellor of Lund University. She had made her career in Lund but she had also, like many legal scholars in her generation, had a lot of American contacts; just before she became rector, for example, she had been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. In retrospect, Flodgren has pointed out that she did not initially have a particular commitment to European issues but more to internationalisation in general. In the first major interview she gave in LUM shortly after taking office, she emphasised the global responsibility of the university and highlighted her experiences of American academic life (LUM, 9 1992: 12–14 and 23). Soon, however, European references appeared in Flodgren’s statements. In speeches and declarations, she stressed that Lund’s geographical location made Sweden’s ongoing integration into Europe particularly noticeable here, she underlined the special responsibility for the Baltic States that Swedish universities had, and she expressed pride in the fact that so many from Lund participated in the Erasmus Programme (LUM: Årskrönika 1991/1992: 2 and 40; LUM, 12 1993: 9). During her years as the leader of the university, she would take several different initiatives that contributed to the Europeanisation.

One measure that Flodgren took fairly immediately was to commission the British consultant Gavin Thompson to write a report on the possibilities for Lund to participate in EC’s research programmes. When he presented his report in early 1993, he concluded that the conditions were good but that the opportunities were not sufficiently exploited, and that knowledge of the European system was inadequate. Among other things, researchers needed more administrative support and help with writing applications. He also said that encouragement in the form of rewards or recognition could be given ‘to individuals and institutions that contribute to the ‘Europeanisation’ of education and research’. In addition, he recommended that Lund University should focus on developing special centres, particularly in engineering and science, which would be better placed to compete internationally (LUM, 3 1993: 9). Later in 1993, LUM (6 1993: 13) reported that the University Board had decided to set up a central EC office attached to the International Secretariat. Its task would be to provide the faculties with information on current European research programmes and to assist with applications. Thompson was assigned to this activity and would spend 6 days a month in Lund.

A further way of drawing attention to the new opportunities was the visits made by LUM writers to various European institutions. From Brussels, Göran Frankel reported on the EC’s research policy and met key Swedish figures, including the Swedish research counsel Mats Ola Ottosson. He pointed out that Europeans were good at research but less good at translating it into new products. Per Strangert, who worked in Brussels for the Swedish research councils, shared this view, but at the same time said that many positive things were happening and that new networks and synergies could be created through COMETT and Erasmus (LUM, 7 1993: 2–3). In the same year, LUM also visited another institution, the European University Institute in Florence. The historian Mikael af Malmborg, who wrote a doctoral thesis in Lund on Sweden and early Western European integration, was interviewed. He was one of the very first Swedes to be a researcher at the EUI and spoke enthusiastically about the stimulating international environment. The institute’s president, Emile Noel, called for more interest from Northern Europe: ‘More researchers from Scandinavia would contribute a lot to research here. For the next academic year, four Swedes have applied to the Institute, which is surprisingly few’ (LUM, 6 1993: 12).

During these years, 1993–1994, LUM repeatedly emphasised that the Erasmus cooperation was going well for Sweden in general and Lund in particular. ‘Lund at the top of the Erasmus league!’ read one headline, and the article stated that most students, 453 of the total of 2500 from Sweden who had received a scholarship, came from Lund University. ‘This is a great success for Lund’, said Bengt Nilsson at the International Secretariat. In a wider context, Lund also stood out, emerging as ‘one of the leading universities in Europe in terms of student mobility’, despite being only in the second year of the Erasmus Programme (LUM, 6 1993: 13; LUM, 10 1993: 21). At the same time, the reciprocal nature of the programme meant that an equal number of foreign students would come to Lund, requiring significantly more courses in English. The 1993/1994 course catalogue thus listed 178 courses in English, almost double the number of the previous year (LUM, 8 1993: 16).

On November 13, 1994, a referendum was held on Swedish EU membership. It was preceded not only by an intense political debate but also by a broader campaign and extensive public education efforts. Although the outcome was highly uncertain – for much of 1994 the ‘against’ side led in the opinion polls – there was a widespread view that Swedish citizens needed to acquire a better knowledge of the EU. Against this background, Lund University organised a series of lectures for the general public under the title ‘A New Europe’, in which Lund academics shed light on EU issues from different points of view. According to an article in LUM (4 1994: 7), there was a need for more neutral and comprehensive information on the EU, in contrast to the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ campaigns.

At the same time, in 1994, something even more significant was happening in terms of Europeanisation at Lund University: a new, 1-year master’s programme in European Affairs started in the autumn semester. It had three specialisations – European Law, European Politics and European Business Administration – and was the result of a group led by the Vice-Chancellor Boel Flodgren having relatively quickly developed a proposal for a novel programme focusing on EC/EU issues. Many Swedish universities already had various forms of European studies, but the new master’s programme in Lund was more ambitious, multidisciplinary and integrated elements from political science, law and economics, in addition to guest lectures by people with personal experience from the EU institutions. Flodgren was interviewed in LUM and was very pleased with the programme. She saw it as another step in the university’s internationalisation efforts. With its strong research in many relevant areas, Lund could offer a qualified education that could provide the skills needed in the new Europe, Flodgren argued. She also returned to a trope we have encountered before: ‘Another advantage is our proximity to the Continent. It makes it easier to engage guest lecturers and experts from institutions in the rest of Europe’ (LUM, 1 1994: 11).

Conclusions

Sweden’s entry into the EU in January 1995 had been preceded by the Europeanisation of one of the country’s large universities. In a first step, in 1987 and a few years after that, a strong European discourse had developed in Lund out of a more general rhetoric of internationalisation, in many ways just before public opinion changed in favour of Swedish EC/EU membership. It is possible to speak of a European awakening during these years at Lund University. Academic leaders, researchers and students saw an opportunity to become part of the emerging Western European education community and to benefit from new forms of research funding, but there was also a widespread conviction that these European collaborations offered a concrete form of internationalisation that could benefit Lund, especially as the university was perceived to have such an advantageous geographical position.

In a next step, in the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the general European discourse was reinforced and the engagement with academic colleagues in Eastern Europe contributed to a general mobilisation. At the same time, concrete collaborations started to take shape and be implemented. At the same time, it became clear that Lund University was partly ill-prepared to welcome and integrate foreign students, and the resources invested were small. In addition, the European bureaucracy was perceived as byzantine and contacts with ‘Brussels’ were not always smooth. Nevertheless, European elements found their way into everyday academic life and became part of the university’s information flow.

In a third stage, in the years before Swedish EU membership, several initiatives were taken to raise the level of knowledge about Europe, both inside and outside the university. These included new courses and programmes with a European focus, lectures for a general audience, and measures to deepen the understanding of the European research landscape for Lund staff.

The Europeanisation of Lund University did not, by all accounts, end with EU accession. On the contrary, a preliminary review of LUM in the period up to the year 2000 indicates that Europeanisation continued, gained an even clearer institutional foothold and became increasingly part of everyday academic life. For example, European studies was conducted in a number of fields such as political science, law, economics, history, human geography and ethnology. This research took place in a variety of contexts: in traditional departments, in new research groups or networks, as a part of special initiatives or programmes. A further step was taken with the creation of the Centre for European Studies/European Research in 1997, an institutional innovation of strategic and symbolic importance for the university.

Finally, two broader questions deserve further study in the future. The first one concerns the relationship between a more general internationalisation that has a long history and the specific Europeanisation that took off in the late 1980s. At certain stages they seem to have become almost synonymous, but there is reason to believe that internationalisation remained an overarching concept which, moreover, gained renewed impetus when globalisation came onto the agenda in the years around 2000. In general, Lund University’s relationship to and position in different geographical spaces – the Swedish nation, the Öresund region, the Nordic countries and the world at large – deserves more investigation.

The second broader question concerns Europeanisation and the formation of the knowledge society. In the discourse on Europe uncovered here, it is worth noting that explicit references to the ‘information’ or ‘knowledge’ society as arguments in favour of Europeanisation were uncommon. In fact, the reasons why Lund University should embrace this movement towards Europe were rarely openly articulated. However, it is possible to discern a kind of underlying chain of argumentation that underpinned much of the reasoning and linked to the broader discussions about the conditions of post-industrial society. One starting point was a general desire for increased internationalisation, partly as a consequence of the world being perceived as more politically and economically intertwined. It followed that more students should be trained for a more international labour market and researchers should collaborate more across national borders. Here, the emerging European education and research landscape offered new, concrete opportunities and access to attractive markets, both for individuals (students, teachers, researchers) and for collectives (research teams, institutions, universities). These new European initiatives thus enabled people to develop and research to be conducted in a more specialised way. In the long run, this movement towards Europe was possibly even a requirement for Sweden to become a full member of the new, emerging knowledge society.