By Kristian Serge Skov-Larsen
ksl@adm.au.dk
Professor Dale T. Mortensen was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, arms were raised high in triumph both in Århus and seven time zones away at North-western University in Chicago, Illinois, where the award winner has been working since 1965.
The reason why the champagne was cracked open in Århus was not just because the award had gone to a top researcher whose family roots lie deep in the rich soil of Jutland, but also because Dale T. Mortensen has had close links with labour-market research at Aarhus University for many years – most recently thanks to a five-year grant from the Danish National Research Foundation which means that he works at the School of Economics and Management for three-five months a year.
Henning Bunzel is a senior associate professor at the School of Economics and Management, and has worked closely alongside Dale T. Mortensen. He says that the importance of having a world-class researcher associated with your department cannot be exaggerated.
“For instance, we’ve now managed to attract international PhD scholars to Århus to spend six months of their PhD studies here. And we hold annual conferences focusing on our area of labour-market research at the university’s conference centre, Sandbjerg, normally featuring 15 top names and attracting 50-60 participants each time. This is an extremely good number for a research environment of our modest size,” he says.
According to Henning Bunzel, the small size of this environment is one of the reasons why a connection to a top researcher is so important.
“News travels fast on the grapevine – people soon know that we have something special to offer, which makes it easier to attract other top researchers for conferences or research projects. We can draw on Dale’s network, which is one of the best trump cards you can have in your hand.”
Ebbe K. Graversen, the leader of the Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy, agrees entirely.
“Personal contacts are the key to collaboration. It’s a bit like the Masons – you can only join if you are invited to join by someone who is already a member. Our studies show that the researchers people include in their EU funding applications tend to be the ones they have collaborated successfully with throughout their entire career,” he says.
This is why young researchers need to be able to draw on the international networks established by their seniors.
“The main aim is to create an international network as early as possible. You could say that young researchers need to decide who they want to peak with twenty years from now – and they need to plan accordingly. And to get where you want to go, you often need to use the networks of the people who have gone before you,” he says.
