Congratulations, Dag! How are you feeling?
Dag Hanstorp: I feel quite honored and encouraged!
You are being awarded an honorary doctorate at UNAM. What does that entail?
It basically means I'm being honored and nothing else. I am invited to the ceremony in Mexico City in November to receive the award, which I'm looking forward to!
You have a long-running collaborative project with UNAM. Could you tell us a bit about that?
The university is Latin America's largest. I am appointed honorary doctor there because, since 2014, I have run a collaborative project where students go on exchanges from UNAM to Gothenburg with the help of scholarship funds, and vice versa. Around 20 Mexican students have so far come here through the project, and just over 10 Swedish students have gone to Mexico. In addition, 10 teachers from the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology have gone on an exchange to UNAM, funded by the programme, and 8 have come from there and here.
All in all, it has been a very successful collaboration. I am proud of what we have achieved – many of the students from Mexico that we have welcomed come from modest backgrounds and would not have been able to study abroad without this programme. Several of them have continued their studies in Europe. It is particularly pleasing that our researcher Javier Tello Marmolejo originally came as an exchange student through the project, and stayed with us as a doctoral student.
Have you encountered any issues over the years?
Money is always a source of uncertainty. From the beginning, we received scholarships through the Linneaus Palme program, which was funded via SIDA. However, it was discontinued due to the war in Ukraine. Now we have found Erasmus+ as a replacement. But that's always the case in these kinds of contexts – you have to navigate between different financing models.
What's happening within the collaboration going forward?
The project has been running for over 10 years and is ongoing. On September 1, two new scholarship holders from Mexico will land in Gothenburg, and a new doctoral student from UNAM started with us last week.
My counterpart in Mexico, Professor Remigio Cabrera-Trujillo, is coming to Sweden and will stay all through next year. He has been awarded the very prestigious Tage Erlander Professorship, and will spend that time here at the Physics Department.
How are you celebrating?
Remigio is coming here for a short stay in September, so I'll hold the celebrations until he has arrived. At that point I hope I can throw away the crutches and start working again, and then we can celebrate together!
Text: Carolia Svensson
