Prof. Dr. Lars Geschwind

Universities are one of the oldest existing institutions, with medieval roots entrenched in traditions, cultures, narratives and legacies (Rothblatt, 1997). Thus, as organizations universities are temporal, historically embedded entities (Vaara & Lamberg, 2016). A significant part of this history concerns their relationships with their surrounding societies, with all their various stakeholders and interests. This paper explores the tug-of-war between different visions of the direction of academic knowledge through a study of the history of engineering education. Education is one of the main products of universities, rife with contested values representing mixed purposes (Biesta, 2009). The direction of engineering education in particular is perhaps more contested than most, being situated in a position of precarious balance between theory and application (Harwood, 2010), with links to both technical research (Seely, 1993) and industrial development (Case, 2017). The aim of this talk is thus to analyse ideas and proposals on how to educate engineers for the future, tracing competing visions of knowledge through strands of different stakeholder perspectives intersecting and diverging over time. Industrial actors have long had key roles in defining what engineering education is and should be, but have also become increasingly challenged by other stakeholders with growing voices and interests – including students and governments (Fagrell, 2020). This has given rise to a blending of professional and research practices in continuous local flux (Magnell, 2019) – balancing business values of employability and relevance (Rhew et al., 2019) with academic values of knowledge for its own sake (Edström, 2020), as well as emerging values of sustainability and societal challenges (Mulder, 2017).

Lars Geschwind is Professor in Engineering Education Policy and Management and coordinator of the research group HEOS (Higher Education Organization Studies) at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. His main research interests are higher education policy, institutional governance, academic leadership and management and academic work. Most studies include comparative components and temporal/historical perspectives. Lars has professional experience from working on higher education and research from government agencies, private institute and international consultancy. He has held teaching and research positions at three different Swedish universities before joining KTH and is also affiliated researcher at Tampere University and at the Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies, Portugal. He earned his PhD in History from Uppsala University.