What if you could take a substance that allows a nasty bacterium to resist the human immune system and develop it into a drug to help people with completely different diseases? It sounds like a fairy tale for medical researchers. Yet this is precisely what is about to happen in Lund. Lars Björck hopes that the enzyme IdeS can be used to treat a number of autoimmune diseases. The nasty bacterium is

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/enzyme-killer-bacteria-could-save-seriously-ill-kidney-patients - 2025-08-23

In our everyday lives, we surround ourselves with electronics without really thinking about it. We go to work by car or train, travel by air when we go on holiday, and are reliant on our mobile phones, iPads and laptops. We take the products’ functions for granted, until they suddenly stop working. The fact is that this happens fairly often – every year in Sweden, we pay roughly SEK 2 billion to r

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/eu-project-produce-more-reliable-electronics - 2025-08-23

At the Academy of Music in Malmö, Peter Spissky from Czechoslovakia found an opportunity to develop his interest in baroque music – a genre that didn’t suit the political system in his homeland. Through his research on how gestures taken from speech, acting and dance can be compressed into the movement of the bow, he hopes to come closer to the lively, vibrant playing that is at the heart of the g

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/bowing-swing - 2025-08-23

For a researcher to be successful, he or she not only needs to produce good research – it also has to gain exposure. However, there is competition for space in scientific and popular science journals. This has led to the growth of a grey area with unprofessional journals that take payment from researchers who want their work to appear. Kristoffer Holmqvist recommends the information on the Univers

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/unprofessional-open-access-publishing-new-industry - 2025-08-23

Industrialised construction gained momentum during the record years with the Million Program in the 1960s. Wall panels were constructed in factories and assembled on site, whereas the rest was mostly made artisanally. Today, industrialised construction involves embracing industrial principles and adopting them to the specific conditions of construction “This involved mass production, the ideal was

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/sweden-and-japan-worlds-foremost-countries-within-industrialised-construction - 2025-08-23

Jerker Lessing is a doctoral student at the Faculty of Engineering (LTH) and has a burning interest in the subject of industrialised construction. Although his academic career is still in its early stages, he has already led two courses at Stanford University, California. And now, at the end of March, his latest students will visit Lund University to see how far Sweden has come in the field. Jerke

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/lth-doctoral-student-sought-after-lecturer-stanford-university - 2025-08-23

Could green citizen journalism on social media be a way to solve China’s huge environmental problems? “Perhaps. Citizen journalism forces change. However, the authorities still believe that experts and more control from above will solve the problem of climate change. They haven’t understood that the trend cannot be reversed without the involvement of a grassroots movement.” An increasing number of

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/green-grassroots-journalism-important-tackle-chinas-environmental-problems - 2025-08-23

How did the education system develop? Why did some countries choose to secularise schools completely, while others gave state support to private religious schools? Johannes Lindvall has conducted a survey of how Western schooling developed and had his article published in the world’s most prestigious political science journal. Johannes Lindvall. American Political Science Review is to political sc

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/article-development-school-system-published-prestigious-journal - 2025-08-23

Just before Christmas, his department lost out on a top international researcher, an investment worth over SEK 100 million. A month later, his group reported a major breakthrough in pheromone research. Professor Christer Löfstedt, head of the Department of Biology, one of the largest departments at Lund University, features in the first of a series of articles on day-to-day academic leadership – a

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/rollercoaster-life-head-department - 2025-08-23

Pear-shaped atomic nuclei can reveal clues as to why the Universe is made up of more matter than anti-matter. Professor of Physics Joakim Cederkäll’s research on this type of atomic nucleus has now made it onto the top 10 of breakthroughs in physics from 2013. Professor of Physics Joakim Cederkäll talks about the hunt for answers to the mystery of matter and anti-matter. Photo: Gunnar Menander. Pr

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/pear-shaped-atomic-nuclei-top-10-break-throughs-physics - 2025-08-23

Scholarships from the EU have also strongly favoured Lund University’s exchanges with the surrounding world. Thanks to EU scholarships, a total of close to 18 000 students, researchers and other staff have come to Lund University or travelled to countries within Europe and beyond in the past fourteen years. There has been more incoming than outgoing traffic, but in recent years Swedes have shown i

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/eu-membership-profitable-lu - 2025-08-23

Attitudes to the EU are divided and uncertainty is great concerning the number of people who will vote in the EU parliamentary elections on 25 May. For Lund University, however, Sweden’s membership in the EU has brought substantial benefits. Lund is one of the Swedish universities that rake in most millions for research. The EU’s latest three framework programmes for research cover fourteen years,

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/18-000-eu-scholarships-have-promoted-exchange - 2025-08-23

Stortorget, the main square in the centre of Malmö, has looked the same for the past 35 years or so but the way in which the city’s inhabitants use the space has changed. These changes provide a picture of the development of the city and community, from an industrial society to a society based on services and consumption. Mattias Kärrholm. Photo: Kennet Ruona Professor of architecture Mattias Kärr

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/fewer-malmo-city-dwellers-take-break-stortorget - 2025-08-23

What should the University do to be at the forefront in e-learning? A new inquiry shows that better collaboration between digital platforms and training of lecturers on how digital teaching can be used to improve students’ learning are a step in the right direction. The inquiry on e-learning has been carried out by the Centre for Educational Development (CED), which organised a vision seminar for

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/staff-training-boost-e-learning - 2025-08-23

The eminent London universities UCL and Imperial College, as well as the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris and Chalmers in Sweden, have all concentrated their focus on areas of research excellence and global challenges. Lund University should draw inspiration from their example, in the view of Pro Vice-Chancellor for research Sven Strömqvist. Sven Strömqvist (right) was the host for the c

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/university-must-concentrate-focus-strong-areas-research - 2025-08-23

How can images show that the world we live in is being subjected to ongoing climate change? This is the research question being considered by Adam Brenthel, a doctoral student in art history. He has studied researchers’ attempts to translate their findings into images to better communicate them to the general public. He thinks polar bears, the animal most often used to symbolise climate change, ar

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/polar-bear-hackneyed-image-climate-change - 2025-08-23

The bad news about malignant melanoma is that the disease is increasing more rapidly than most other types of cancer. The good news is that it is easy to cure, as long as it is detected in time. A research group in Lund has therefore started a project that it is hoped will make it easier to correctly diagnose suspicious moles. Kari Nielsen (at the left). Photo: Roger Lundholm The purpose of the pr

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/tape-could-simplify-skin-cancer-diagnosis - 2025-08-23

Being director of the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics is about choosing what to do, and what not to do. At the start, Lena Neij travelled a lot, but now she sees representing the institute abroad as a responsibility shared by all the staff. She still supervises doctoral students, but doesn’t have the time she would like for her own research, nor for students and teac

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/there-are-lot-duties-role - 2025-08-23

The Hutu militia FDLR, who were behind the genocide in Rwanda, now live in eastern Congo, one of a number of rebel groups in the war-torn country. Social anthropologist Anna Hedlund has lived with the group and describes the systematic attacks on the Congolese population, as well as a hopeless situation in which the group live as exiles, not welcome anywhere. Social anthropologist Anna Hedlund wit

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/social-anthropologist-who-lived-perpetrators-genocide - 2025-08-23

“My stay here has not only given me practical access to sources and libraries. Being in a different academic environment has also given me new ideas and perspectives on what we do in Lund.” These are the words of historian Marie Cronqvist, who moved to Berlin with her husband and children last summer. Now it will soon be time to go home, but before that LUM had time to meet them and find out about

https://www.staff.lu.se/article/finding-new-inspiration-berlin - 2025-08-23