The university's honorary doctors 2023 lectured

This year's, much appreciated, honorary doctorate lectures with Staffan Göthe, Honorary Doctor of Philosophy, Alice Kempe, Honorary Doctor of Technology, Peter Englund, Honorary Doctor of Technology (appointed 2022) and Jan Moström, Honorary Doctor in Technology.

Here you can read excerpts of what the honorary doctors highlighted in their lectures. Films from each lecture will be published shortly.

Exploring the contrast between innocence and arsenic

The actor, playwright and director Staffan Göthe spoke about the art of exploring the contrast between innocence and arsenic, about the theater as a condensed reflection of reality and the difference between portraying a role on stage and being a fly on it.

Staffan Göthe based his speech on the androgynous figure Tintomara from Swedish author Carl Jonas Love Almqvist's classic work “The Queen's Diadem” from 1834. The plot takes place almost half a century before the work was published, at the time of the assassination of “Theater King” Gustav III. Tintomara steals a jewel the night before the murder. Tintomara conciders it not to be a theft but a borrow. Tintomara only wants to show it to her mother. Before the mother takes her own life with arsenic to protect her children from the long arm of the law, she utters one of the most classic lines in Swedish theater history: “Two things are white – innocence and arsenic.”

“The mastery of acting is about exploring all useful contrasts, that is bringing to life through the contrast between innocence and arsenic”, said Staffan Göthe.

Credibility was irrelevant

In Gustav III's 18th century, credibility on the theater stage was completely irrelevant. Theater was an aristocratic diversion. A hundred years later, psychological realism with its “almost engineering-like demand for credibility” made its entrance into theater art. Swedish theater was characterised by what Staffan Göthe calls “the tyranny of credibility” late into the 20th century. The legacy of 19th-century psychological realism is managed, possibly less harshly than on the stage, in the film and television industry.

“But psychological realism is a reflection all the same. It is an illusion and pretence. Not reality. It is enough for a real blowfly to appear on the scene. It does not represent a fly. It is a fly. The fly has not taken any direction and is attracting unwanted attention.”

Staffan Göthe exemplifies that he, a pensioner, can pretend to be an eleven-year-old Italian schoolboy.

“The audience cannot believe that I am Federico. That would be uncanny. But it can be entertained by my way of imagining and pretending. Me and the audience create Federico together.”

Afraid of overplay

As a teacher at the Theater Academy in Malmö, he often meets students who are afraid of overplay – a fear that he usually dismisses because the art of theater is based on elevation.

He rounded off his lecture with a real-life story when he observed a small child disturbing the other passengers on a train, causing the mother to threaten that the conductor would throw him off in Älvsbyn if he did not stop. She put on a metaphorical mask. Credibility was subordinated to more savage means of expression, not unlike Italian Commedia dell´arte or Japanese No. The child realised that the mother was playing and found it amusing. But the performance had an effect. The child sat still in the train seat to study the elusive landscape between Boden and Älvsbyn.

– That's show business! exclaimed Staffan Göthe.

Important financier with her heart in the forest

The Kempestiftelserna is one of Luleå University of Technology's most important research financiers. Over the years, many research projects have been carried out thanks to the Kempestiftelsen's contributions. When Chair Alice Kempe gave her honorary doctorate lecture, she took us on a journey through history and where the foundation stands today.

Alice Kempe is a Northerner to the core. She grew up in a family in Örnsköldsvik that was characterised by entrepreneurial values and the home was used from time to time for business dinners. The parents had no demands on what she would become, but there was an unspoken expectation that she would continue to higher studies. She chose to become a forester.

The interest in the forest had been in the family for a long time, and with the forester's training, she found an outlet for her love of the forest. After five years of education, she entered working life and started at the Swedish Forest Agency's head office, and then continued to the Government Office where she worked with sustainable development in the transport sector. In 2001, she started at the the Swedish Energy Agency, and she herself says that it was good preparation for the job with the Kempestiftelserna.

The foundations have shifted focus over the years

Alice Kempe had the privilege of working for a longer time with her father, who was then chairman of the foundations, before she took over the chairmanship in 2018. In the early years, the foundations focused on completely different projects than today. It could be about grants to single mothers, schools or vulnerable children. Today, they are completely focused on research funding for universities in Norrbotten, Västerbotten and Västernorrland.

Alice sees the forest as an important raw material that takes time to produce. When the forest raw material is needed for more areas of use, there is a risk of shortage and the industry cries out for more research. The Kempestiftelserna have therefore contributed a lot to wood research, including the CT-scanner at Luleå University of Technology in Skellefteå. Through this technology, the sawing of logs can be optimised and the log used in the very best way, which saves resources and increases the quality of the industry's wood products.

The future is in the north

In her commitment there is also a desire to contribute to an increased attractiveness in northern Sweden.

"I feel happy when I hear the politicians say that people should move north with the green transition. But for people to want to move here and stay, we need more and better schools, healthcare, and culture. We need a stronger base without losing the Norrland soul", says Alice.

She herself enjoys the north and spends time in her house in Örnsköldsvik as often as she can.

Success is a dangerous drug

It's a cliché that we learn more from our failures than our successes, but that doesn't make it any less true. In his honorary doctorate lecture, the historian Peter Englund reasoned, based on three examples of apparently strong systems that would eventually fail, whether there are factors that unite these failures and whether we can learn anything from them.

The three examples were the early 20th century venture into the airship industry, the 1960s space race and the Finnish telecom giant Nokia.

In the early 20th century, airships were superior to airplanes; they were bigger, safer and faster. But the airship industry imploded. What happened?

Soviet Union was superior

The same fate befell the Soviet Union in the space race with the United States, even though the Soviet Union was long superior to its competitor in the West. For Peter Englund, who was born in the 60's, the race to the moon got his attention as a child.

“I knew the names of all the rocket types. The space race was part of the zeitgeist with its boundless optimism. But it was also exciting because it was an ideologically charged competition between two political systems.”

During one period, 15 of the 17 best-selling mobile phones were produced by Nokia. It was one of the world's most valuable companies. In 2007, Nokia was the world leader. Seven years later, the company's mobile division is forced into a bankruptcy sale.

“As a historian, I am not primarily interested in failures as a technical problem but as a process – how failures occur, not in spite of, but due to, success.”

Big investment in airships

After World War I, the US Navy invested huge sums in airships. At the same time, there was a civilian demand due to the great distances in the USA. The airships' problem was not the fire hazard. The most advanced airships contained the stable gas helium, not hydrogen. The problem lay in building ships that were durable without being too heavy. Warning signals from, among others, the ship manufacturer Goodyear were ignored by those responsible. Only when exact the accident as the manufacturers had foreseen occured was the civilian program discontinued.

The political leaders of the Soviet Union were initially not interested in rocket research. But when they realised its propaganda value, the success went to their heads too. This meant that the politicians made irrelevant, but distracting demands on the rocket engineers. For example, General Secretary Khrushchev wanted to combine a trip to Mars with a UN speech. Hubris and external political pressure made the engineers take ever greater risks. They removed “unnecessary” things such as space suits and emergency equipment.

“The successes made them focus on what had proven to work before instead of thinking in new ways like the American engineers.”

The successes gave rise to hubris

The same can be said about Nokia who got hubris because of their early success. They stuck to existing solutions and ignored a development that went in a different direction. Like the Soviet Union, Nokia was extremely top-managed. The middle managers did not dare to tell the truth. It didn't help that Nokia had better market research than the competition because the information didn't reach management. Nokia stuck to an outdated operating system and mobiles without a touchscreen while the company dismissed the iPhone as a niche product.

Peter Englund believes that the ancient Greeks were right to consider hubris to be a mortal sin.

“The moral of these examples is that success is dangerous and early success is life-threatening.”

His mission: contribute to a sustainable mining industry

The modern lifestyle that many of us aspire to is completely dependent on minerals and metals. The green transition depends on them. What should we manufacture renewable energy sources or further develop the digitisation of otherwise? The challenge is to extract and refine our minerals and metals in a fossil-free way, something that Jan Moström talked about during his honorary doctorate lecture.

When Jan Moström took over the role of CEO of the mining giant LKAB in 2015, he realised that the company would have to take the lead when it comes to the transition in the mining industry – an industry that has a global climate impact. The big sticking point was the reliance on fossil fuels to create the amount of energy needed to refine the ore the company mines, into steel.

The road to fossil dependence

If we go back to the Industrial Revolution, the mining industry was completely turned upside down when the (as it was then thought) amasing coal was discovered and started to be used to fuel the blast furnaces. Previously, the forest had been used as an energy source, but wood is far from being as efficient when it comes to creating high temperatures. However, the fossil coal was hard work to mine, so when oil and its properties were discovered, it was much easier to extract, transport and store. At the same time, natural gas began to be used as an energy source in society, also much easier to access compared to hard coal. In addition, the oil and gas provided cheap energy.

Renewables the only solution

The whole world has become aware of the disadvantage of fossil fuels, the Earth's temperature is rising a little all the time, and if we don't stop it, a climate disaster awaits. How then does it go together with a modern lifestyle that requires enormous amounts of energy and metals? According to Jan Moström, there is only one way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions – and that is to use renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and hydropower. LKAB also extracts rare earth metals that are used to manufacture electric cars, wind turbines and electronics.

Hydrogen is revolutionising the mining industry

Another important energy source, which LKAB has chosen to reduce its climate impact and contribute to lower carbon dioxide emissions, is hydrogen. But to produce green hydrogen, large amounts of fossil-free electricity, such as that produced with the help of renewable sources, are required. LKAB contributes to hydrogen research in northern Sweden with, among others, Luleå University of Technology. Together with SSAB and Vattenfall, LKAB has created HYBRIT, a plant for the production of fossil-free steel with a pilot plant for storing fossil-free hydrogen. But all is not nice and dandy.

"The challenge with mining is that it is a controversial industry for which it is difficult to gain social and political acceptance", he says.