NEWS On 30 September, Associate Professor Linda Lundmark and Professor Paul Zieger submitted a project application to the Swedish Research Council to establish an interdisciplinary research school in polar research at Umeå University and Stockholm University between 2026 and 2029. They have applied for a total of almost 40 million SEK for the project.
On 27 August, the Swedish Research Council announced a call titled “Research School within Polar Research”, an initiative based on a government mandate with the purpose of ensuring the growth of excellent researchers and strengthening Sweden’s international impact in polar research. Associate Professor Linda Lundmark at Umeå University was quick to respond and began drafting an application to establish a polar research school at Umeå University, together with collaborating researcher Paul Zieger, Professor at Stockholm University. Linda Lundmark is currently the director of the Arctic Graduate School at Umeå University and believes that a polar research school is a perfect development for the university:
“It would mean that we expand the geographical scope of our current research school to also include Antarctica. It would also mean that we strengthen our collaboration between Stockholm and Umeå, allowing us to pool our resources when it comes to polar research. Polar research is important for how we as a society will be able to face a future increasingly characterized by uncertainty, not least regarding the climate. We do this by promoting interdisciplinary research that integrates different research fields while also meeting society’s expectations that results should lead to change.”
In their project application, funding is requested to establish a Swedish Polar Interdisciplinary Research School (SPIRS) that will begin in January 2026 and run for four years, and finance up to 75% of the participants’ salaries.
The purpose of the project is to safeguard Sweden’s long-term expertise, coordination, and logistical knowledge in the polar regions. These regions are greatly affected by the rapid and large-scale global changes in the cryosphere, ecosystems, and local communities due to climate change and human activity. Because of this, the next generation of polar researchers needs to be experts capable of working effectively across disciplinary boundaries, contributing to evidence-based solutions, and bridging the gap between research and policy.
To achieve this, a polar research school will be established to prepare Doctoral students of today to become polar research experts of the future.
If the project application is approved, the research school will be established as early as January 2026, which means that the timeframe for announcing doctoral projects for the school will be short. The project will therefore begin the call for applications immediately upon approval, covering projects at both Umeå University and Stockholm University.
“We will receive a decision in December at the latest, and the project starts in January. By then, we need to have the doctoral projects ready so that we can start recruiting Doctoral students. We will therefore announce doctoral projects within all research fields, spread across all faculties at the university. We encourage our colleagues to already start considering whether they want to apply,” says Linda.
