The world around us is becoming increasingly turbulent and unpredictable. What is happening in the United States, China and other parts of the world today often differs from what was predicted a few years ago. This complicates matters and makes the world more challenging to navigate even for universities. Therefore, stable and predictable international university collaborations may be particularly important for us right now.

The Nordic community closest to KTH is Nordic 5 Tech, N5T, an alliance comprising KTH and Chalmers in Sweden, NTNU in Norway, DTU in Denmark, and Aalto in Finland. Our countries and university systems are similar. In many ways, we have long had close ties with our Nordic partner universities. This applies to exchanges in research and education, as well as a number of joint programmes:

Within Europe, the European Universities Initiative is one of the European Commission’s flagship projects in our field. Together with eight other universities, KTH is part of the University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering – Unite!. This collaboration recognises the need for better, long-term European integration in higher education and research. It also responds to the more general need to strengthen Europe at a time when other parts of the world are advancing in terms of knowledge development and competitiveness.

N5T and Unite! are visible to staff and students in slightly different ways. These can take the form of student or researcher exchanges, seed funding, collaboration on doctoral programmes, or joint courses and programmes. Through close collaboration, we also develop a shared culture and align our policies. The best way to break down barriers is for people to socialize, and we are doing this more and more within the various alliances!