Academic Ceremony moved to 2022
2020-10-08
When the pandemic began, this year's ceremony was cancelled. The plan was to move the celebration one year ahead, with the hope of holding it at Borås Congress Centre this spring. However, given the uncertainty surrounding restrictions and the planning time required for the ceremony, the Vice-Chancellor, in consultation with the chair and Master of Ceremonies, has decided to postpone the event until 22 April 2022.
Jonas Martinsson is the new Event Coordinator at the university since August this year, as well as Master of Ceremonies for the Academic Ceremony. He says there are several purposes to the Academic Ceremony.
"First, it's about installing new professors and promoting our new doctorate recipients. It is a formal, festive occasion in which family and relatives often participate and at which colleagues within the university socialise and network. You can't replace it with a digital celebration. Another purpose of the event is to showcase the university's research to the outside world, which we still intend to do but in a different form.”
What have been the major obstacles to implementation in 2021?
"We, the group that has previously worked on the ceremony, have, together with the Vice-Chancellor and chair of the board, reviewed different scenarios for how the event could be carried out, but in the end, we decided that a digital event would detract from a large part of what the Academic Ceremony actually means. There is also a great deal of uncertainty about what the situation will look like in the spring, and an event such as this requires a lot of planning; six months is not a long time in this context.”
What will the celebration look like in 2021?
"We aren’t calling it an Academic Ceremony, as it will be something completely different. We will highlight the professors and new doctors who would have participated in the ceremony, but in activities that are more directed towards the public.”
You are new to university since August; what have you done in the past and what are your hopes around the Academic Ceremony in 2022?
"Before I started here, I worked with the Science Festival in Gothenburg, where I was responsible for parts of the public programme and the Forum for Research Communication. In 2022, I look forward to an extra-large celebration, as we will then install and promote the professors and doctors who would have been celebrated in the spring of 2020 and 2021. In recent years, interest in participating in the ceremony has increased, and rightly so – it is a unique opportunity that does not occur anywhere else in society.”
Lina Färm
Suss Wilén/Ida Danell