Linda Wedlin

Associate Professor Linda Wedlin is awarded the Nils Klim Prize 2007. Photo: Tommy Westerberg

Research in media ranking and evaluation of research and tuition at institutions of higher education, lead to Nils Klim Prize for Linda Wedlin from Sweden.

Citation of the Nils Klim Prize Academic Committee:

"Linda Wedlin's field of research is business studies. She has critically analysed the current practice of media ranking and evaluation of research and tuition at institutions of higher education, particularly within the area of business studies. Assessment and peer reviewing of institutions have become more and more widespread phenomena in the political sphere and in media reports on such institutions, and this has strong impact on the organization of tuition and research programs undertaken by the institutions involved.

Ms Wedlin's publications open up for perspectives on this general practice that have not yet been fully observed in research, but are nevertheless of great importance and place the practices in a broader social and political context. For instance, Ms Wedlin has undertaken thorough studies of the treatment of such measures in the media, with special focus on higher education in business and economics, and she has succeeded in deepening our understanding of the interplay between institutions and their social environment. Her successful, cross-disciplinary research combines theories from the fields of communication science, educational research and organization theory. Her contributions have shown the impact of media and political management within the field of higher education, which fundamentally challenges traditional academic freedom in research and correspondingly the philosophy of institutional autonomy. Ms Wedlin's publications have already won approval and generated interest internationally. She is an innovative and very promising researcher, though still young and at the start of her career. Her methods and research approaches open up for a better understanding of how governmental research political agendas reflect a broader, modern social context.

Linda Wedlin (b. 12.4.1975) is Bachelor and later Master of Business Studies from Uppsala University , Sweden . She acquired her Ph.D. thesis at Uppsala University in 2004 with a treatise entitled "Playing the Ranking Game. Field formation and boundary-work in European management". The dissertation was published in England in 2006. She is currently an assistant professor at the Department of Business Studies, Uppsala University , where she teaches Management and Organization. She also supervises master and doctoral studies.

Her research contributions raise fundamental questions concerning academic freedom in a time when universities are subject to governmental and media expectations that are voiced, for instance, in media attention to current tuition and research programs."