“This is a fantastic way to take advantage of each other’s strengths and we see the cooperation as a catalyst for strengthening the Swedish graduate education on climate and biodiversity nationally. We hope this initiative will contribute to Sweden taking a leading role in moving this research agenda of high societal relevance forward”, says Carmen Prieto and Otto Hermelin, study coordinators of the Bolin Centre CRS.

Both the Bolin Centre Climate Research School at Stockholm University and the Lund University ClimBEco graduate research school at the Centre for Environmental and Climate Research (CEC) offer interdisciplinary research educations focusing on the fields of climate, biodiversity and ecosystem services. Based on this common ground, the graduate research schools now want to benefit from each other by increasing the collaborative activities.

“With this cooperation in place, we avoid reinventing the wheel and can expand our course curriculum by taking full advantage of high-quality courses already in place” says Anna Ekberg, coordinator of ClimBEco. Enrolled PhD students can now apply to and receive financial support for taking part in courses offered through both of the research schools.

The cooperation also opens up for opportunities to create new courses and activities of common interest to both research schools and the respective strategic research areas.