Millions donated to research at Aarhus BSS

It has been a profitable spring 2018 at Aarhus BSS. Two new research centres and two new research projects have received funding from private foundations.

Research at Aarhus BSS is booming this spring. With the announcement of two new centres, two new research projects and with the generous donations of private foundations, Aarhus BSS has underlined its position as one of the Denmark’s leading research institutions in areas as different as digital transformation, globalisation and public leadership.

Together and individually, these projects underline the broad academic scope and interdisciplinarity of Aarhus BSS.

Købmand Herman Sallings Fond, the Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish Industry Foundation have each donated millions to the individual projects, and I am very pleased that the private foundations recognise the importance of the subject-specific as well as interdisciplinary research that Aarhus BSS is able to deliver.

The Crown Prince lends name to centre

The news of the inauguration of the new Crown Prince Frederik Center for Public Leadership on 23 May at the Department of Political Science has received quite a bit of press coverage. The Crown Prince, who is an alum from the Department of Political Science, will attend the opening and perform the official inauguration of the centre three days before his 50th birthday.

The establishment of the centre was made possible by a generous donation from Købmand Herman Sallings Fond for which we are very grateful.

As such, the donation allows Aarhus BSS to expand our strong international position as a powerhouse for research into public leadership. Research that is also highly linked to management research in the private sector. The centre will be a interdisciplinary research centre involving researchers from all six departments at Aarhus BSS and collaborating with Aarhus University’s faculties Health and Arts. Other participants include top researchers from a number of Danish as well as international universities and other international partners. 

The centre director will be Professor Lotte Bøgh Andersen from the Department of Political Science.

Greater understanding of globalisation

With a DKK 15 million donation from the Carlsberg Foundation, Professor Philipp Schröder and his colleagues from the Department of Economics and Business Economics will be able to dig deep into the economic mechanisms that occur when globalisation and new technology generate upheaval throughout society.

In the professor’s own words, the research itself will be “nerdy economics”, but the point of departure and the expected research results will prove very important for society as we stand on the brink of the fourth industrial revolution with digital transformation as the driving force.

The importance of digital transformation

Indeed, digital transformation is the focal point of two research projects at the Department of Law and the Department of Management respectively.

The Danish Industry Foundation has supported both projects with almost DKK 12 million in total.

In the years to come, Professor Mette Neville from the Department of Law will be researching and developing tools that allow boards in small and medium-sized companies to improve their skills at making strategic decisions in relation to the digital development. Meanwhile, Professor Børge Obel from the Department of Management will be researching and developing new business models for the growing Smart Home industry.

In both projects, companies will be involved in the research as well as in the development work, and these projects will certainly not be the last that take point of departure in the digital development.

As we know, digital transformation doesn’t just concern how we handle the technology itself. It also concerns how we live with it, how we understand it and how we use it in our everyday lives. This goes for companies, for each of us individually and for society as a whole.

For this reason, it is important that Aarhus BSS is now boosting the business and social science-related aspects of research into digital transformation.

You can read more about the projects on Aarhus BSS’ news website