Higher Education Research Hub

Programme

Venue: Room BE036

12:00 Lunch

13:00 Welcome and short information about the HE Hub

13:15 Keynote: Fault Lines: Nordic Higher Education in an Age of Uncertainty. 
Mari Elken, Associate Professor, Department of Education, University of Oslo, Norway:

14:15 Short presentations:

• Ann-Marie Eriksson, Thomas Hillman & Charlott Sellberg: Title: Between Automation and Authorship: Generative AI and the Doing of Academic Writing
• Francisco Gomes: Title: What Inspires Our Students, and Why It Matters for Teaching
• Anne Solli: Title: Learning to Engage with Controversial Socioscientific Issues in Science Teacher Education
• Malin Brus, Kristina Jonäll & Anna-Karin Pettersson: Title: From Engagement to Learning: Using Learning Models and Digital Activity Data as a Diagnostic Lens for Course Design

15:00 Coffee break

15:15 Workshop - way forward & thematic groups

16:30 End of the day

18:30 Dinner (venue TBA) 

Keynote 

Mari Elken, Associate Professor, Department of Education, University of Oslo, Norway: https://www.uv.uio.no/iped/english/people/aca/marielk/  

Fault Lines: Nordic Higher Education in an Age of Uncertainty
Nordic universities have long been regarded as models of well-funded, open, and democratically governed higher education. Yet beneath this stable surface, fault lines are forming — structural tensions that, left unaddressed, risk reshaping the foundations of the system.

Public budgets are tightening, and demographic decline means reduced age cohorts of students in the future. Technological developments, in particular AI, are raising fundamental questions about the purpose, form, and value of higher education. Academic freedom is eroding across Europe. Academic self-governance is weakening. The shifting geopolitical landscape has challenged long-held assumptions about open, collaborative, and internationally connected research and higher education systems. These challenges are not isolated — they are interconnected fault lines running through the same institutional terrain. This keynote maps these key challenges and reflects on what they might mean in practice — for governing and organising higher education institutions, and for processes of education and research within.