About us
The Department of Economic History in Lund was founded in 1949. The last decade it has grown tremendously; as an independent department in the discipline, Lund is the biggest in the world. The success story is based on relevance in research and teaching, and an including, dynamic and international research and learning environment.
The department employs roughly 100 people, distributed between teachers, postdocs, researchers, technical/administrative staff, and PhD candidates. The programme for doctoral studies involves about 30 students, and normally 5–10 of them graduate each year. The department’s total budget for the 2021 fiscal year amounts to about SEK 75 million, of which 80 percent is spent on research and the doctoral programme. In addition, research at the department is financed by stipends with about SEK 5 million annually. The department sets itself apart through its relatively high share of faculty financed through research projects. The main funders are Vetenskapsrådet, Riksbankens jubileumsfond, Vinnova, Forte, Wallenbergstiftelserna, and Handelsbankens forskningsstiftelser.
The overarching research strategy of the department is to be open and inclusive, and it is anchored in three key concepts: relevance, internationalisation, and building research infrastructure. The department has sought to let a thousand flowers bloom and the result is a very productive, creative, and diverse research environment.
The teaching has a strong research connection and is correspondingly built on relevance and internationalisation. The department’s strong research connection leads to an invaluable link being forged between state-of-the-art research and teaching at all levels. The fact that active researchers participate in both course design and teaching guarantee a high quality and course content which reflects the research frontier; the department offers a rich range of programs and courses in constant development.
Since the autumn term 2019, the department offers its own Bachelor’s programme, Economy and Society, which directly established itself among the top searched international programs in Sweden, all disciplines. Here we also find Lund University’s interdisciplinary programme BIDS, Bachelor’s in Development Studies, which the department is heavily involved in. Last but not least, the department has programme responsibility for three international Master’s programmes and examine every spring a hundred Master’s students.
- Economic Growth, Population and Development
- Innovation and Global Sustainable Development
- Economic Development and Growth (the first study year is in Madrid or Groningen)
Mats Olsson
Head of Department