Recruitment of Professor and Senior Lecturer
This page is intended as information for you who work with recruitment. Here you can find information about the recruitment process when recruiting teachers, with a focus mainly on professors and senior lecturers.
Teaching positions prepared by the recruitment committee are:
- professor (also adjunct and visiting),
- senior lecturer (also adjunct) as well as
- promotion from assistant professor to senior lecturer.
Applications from departments to recruit a senior lecturer or professor should be sent to the responsible HR-specialist at the Academic Appointments unit, HR-Office.
Other teaching positions are prepared by the departments.
Regulated process
The recruitment process for the employment of teachers is regulated and governed by the Higher Education Act (HL), the Higher Education Ordinance (HF) and internal regulations. The government has delegated a large part of the decision-making power in these matters to the individual universities. This means that each university has the opportunity to adapt its recruitment processes and teacher appointments to its own operations. For that reason, the internal regulations are of great importance for how the recruitment process is handled, which teaching positions should exist and how the higher education institutions interpret the Higher Education Ordinance's eligibility requirements for scientific and pedagogical skills.
It is in KI's appointment procedure and the instructions for the appointment procedure that KI defines which positions are to be counted as teaching positions at the higher education institution and defines the Higher Education Ordinance's requirements for scientific and pedagogical skill.
Combined employment
A professor or senior lecturer may hold a combined employment, which means that the employment at KI is combined with an employment at a healthcare unit that is granted for medical education and research. More information regarding combined employments are available in Swedish.
Recruitment Committee
The Recruitment Committeeis Karolinska Institutet's common authority for the preparation of teacher appointments.
The Academic Appointments Unit is the Recruitment Committee's operational support, which coordinates the recruitment process and documents the committee's decisions and ensures that the final decision on employment is made by the President or the Head of department.
Please contact one of our HR specialists for recruitment of teachers
Expert assessment
When hiring an assistant professor, senior lecturer (including adjunct senior lecturer), professor (including adjunct and visiting professor), expert assessment must take place unless it is clearly unnecessary for an examination of the skills. The experts must be well acquainted with the subject area of the employment, have ongoing research activity and be scientifically and pedagogically qualified at a level that at least corresponds to the eligibility requirements for the employment in question.The experts shall be particularly familiar with the field of research for the employment, currently engaged in their own research, and scientifically and pedagogically qualified at a level corresponding at least to the eligibility requirements for the appointment in question.
Experts must be obtained from outside KI and when appointing Professors or Senior Lecturers, normally at least one of the experts should be from outside Sweden. Experts shall be from different universities. Both genders should be equally represented among experts. When appointing Professors, three expert evaluations will normally be obtained while for appointments as Senior Lecturer, or for promotions to Senior Lecturer, two expert evaluations are sufficient. When appointing Visiting Professors and Adjunct Professors, two expert evaluations will normally be obtained. When appointing Assistant Professors, one expert evaluation shall be obtained from an external expert.
The Recruitment Committee appoints experts based on proposals from the Head of Department or recruitment group for positions as professor or senior lecturer. For other appointments, the head of department makes decisions about experts.
Checklists
The checklist is a tool for the various positions of Senior Lecturers and Professors, also for the change of employment title. Here is the description of a case and what is to be submitted to the administrative officer at the Academic Appointments Unit within the HR Office at KI.
Checklist and process for assistant lecturers who want to apply for promotion can be found on the page For those who want to apply for promotion from Assistant Professor to Senior Lecturer.