European awakening: Discursive Europeanisation and academic embrace of Europe at Lund University, 1985–1995

This article analyses the Europeanisation of Lund University from the mid-1980s until Sweden joined the European Union in 1995. At Lund University, internationalisation had long been high on the agenda but had not had any clear geographical focus. This was to change in the second half of the 1980s, particularly in 1987–1988, when the new emerging European market in research and higher education contributed to a discursive Europeanisation and a desire to become part of various forms of European cooperation. European engagement increased even more in Lund in the wake of the dramatic political changes following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Many leading representatives at Lund University believed that the institution’s geographical location, far from Stockholm but close to Copenhagen and the northern parts of the Continent, predisposed Lund to European cooperation. During the first years of the 1990s, European visions were partly turned into reality in Lund, but it also became clear that there were practical and bureaucratic obstacles along the way.