To summarize, my advice to young people in the beginning of their career – or, for that matter, in mid-career but looking for a change – would be: If you want to see the world and broaden your horison, study and/or work at BTH!

Both as a student and as a researcher and teacher at BTH, there are a multitude of fantastic opportunities offered to meet students, researchers and teachers from many different parts of the world, to develop international networks and to travel to other countries. You may go abroad as an exchange student, an exchange teacher, a visiting researcher or to participate at international conferences and workshops where you present and get feedback on your own research results and can learn about the on-going work of other researchers from many different countries all over the world.

During my years as a researcher and teacher at BTH I have had the opportunity to build up and cultivate both a national and an international collegial network within my areas of research. I have been a guest professor at a university in southern Denmark, at University West and the university in Växjö in Sweden. I have been a guest lecturer at a technical university in Paris, a university in Tokyo, Japan, and at a new technical institute, IIT Mandi, way up in the Himalayas in North India.  I have run several research projects in collaboration with highly respected research colleagues at IIT Madras in India. I have attended workshops and conferences and presented my research on Hawaii, in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Seattle, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, in Sydney in Australia, in Chennai, Cochin and Bangalore in India, and in a number of different countries in Europe.  Last, but not least, I have had the opportunity to take part in building up long-term regional collaboration in the Blekinge region between research, education, the industrial sector including small businesses, and the public sector and society.

My sincere thanks to all the external research funding agencies, as well as to agencies providing funding for teaching and staff exchanges in higher education,  to research colleagues participating in the same projects and sharing some of the traveling involved, to the Grants Office and the International Office at BTH and their predecessors, to the highly professional staff in the economy department and the rest of the skillful administrative staff, and to supportive and encouraging heads of departments, deans and vice chancellors through the years, who have made this explorer’s journey to near and far places in the service of research and education possible!