Svenn-Erik Mamelund appointed as theme lead for the NNF-IAS Fellowship Programme

What does it take to build a research culture where a historian, a climate scientist, and a public health researcher can genuinely learn from one another? These are the kinds of questions that are central to the new NNF-IAS fellowship programme on health and sustainability, and one that Svenn-Erik Mamelund has spent a career grappling with. His experiences will we invaluable for the theme leads and fellows in the programme.

Building Nordic interdisciplinary excellence in health and sustainability

The programme is a collaboration between eight Nordic Institutes for Advanced Study across Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, backed by DKK 48.3 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Its vision is to establish the Nordic region as a world-leading hub for interdisciplinary excellence in health and sustainability research. Over six years, the programme will offer 20 two-year fellowships to early-career researchers from all nationalities and disciplinary backgrounds, with research experience ranging from two to ten years post-PhD. The first call for applications opens in the summer of 2026.

Each cohort of five fellows tackles a specific theme which will be guided by a head theme lead anchored at one of the four main partner institutions in Aarhus, Uppsala, Helsinki, and Oslo. Mamelund, who leads the Centre for Research on Pandemics and Society (PANSOC) at OsloMet, will serve as head theme lead for the fourth cohort, "Health and Sustainbility - Transitions", from August 2031 to June 2032. 

Besides heading one theme each, the four theme leads function on the one hand as local contact points for the respective NNF-AIAS fellows and on the other as a bridge connecting fellows from the different institutes. The theme leads also form a continuity backbone for the programme, connecting cohorts and thematic areas, and ensuring that insights from one group of fellows carry forward into the next.

When CAS approached him about the role, he didn't hesitate. "I did not have to think long to say yes," he says. “It is a privilege to be part of building something genuinely new.”

More than a medical challenge

Mamelund brings 30 years of experience studying how disease moves through societies - and why it never affects the population in an equal manner.  His scientific insights inform the way he thinks about the relationship between health and sustainability:

Climate change, urbanization, and increased contact between humans and animals shift the conditions under which diseases emerge and spread. This means that the line between health and sustainability will be harder to draw.

Looking ahead, Mamelund believes the above scenario will give rise to some of the most urgent questions in health research. Pressures bearing down on population health - from environmental degradation to growing inequality - are accelerating, and no single discipline has the tools to address them alone. Tackling them, he argues, requires the kind of sustained, cross-disciplinary thinking that the NNF-AIAS programme is built to foster.

The challenge of working across disciplines

A key part of the theme lead's role is to identify common denominators across individual research projects within their cohort and to help unlock synergies that might not be immediately obvious to fellows working within their own disciplines. The programme explicitly seeks researchers from all disciplinary backgrounds - from social sciences to biomedical engineering - and building genuine collaboration across those boundaries takes more than good intentions.

"You need a strong scientific base in your own field to open up for multidisciplinary research," Mamelund says. In his experience, genuine collaboration works best when researchers feel confident enough in their own expertise not to perceive colleagues from other fields as a threat. 

As theme lead, Mamelund will work to cultivate exactly that kind of culture. Alongside his role connecting individual projects to the broader theme, he will serve as a local mentor, supporting both the development of fellows' research and their longer-term career trajectories. Beyond academic credentials, he will be looking for researchers with strong social and collaborative skills, qualities he considers just as important as scholarly achievement. 

Sending fellows forward

Talent retention is one of the programme's explicit goals. Early-career researchers are mobile. A two-year fellowship moves fast, and the best people will always have options. Nevertheless, the programme will implement several measures for retaining talent. And  the fellows’ next stage need not be within academia. To facilitate such a transition the programme aims to build bridges with private stakeholders and organisations across the Nordic health sector - giving fellows the opportunity to expand their professional networks, and open pathways to future collaboration or employment. Mamelund’s aim, is not to retain fellows at any cost, but to send them forward in great shape. "Even if they leave early and leave the Nordic region, I hope it is because of us - we made them employable“ he says.

The programme's first cohort will begin their fellowships on 1 September 2027, under the theme "Inequity in Health", led by Professor Christina C. Dahm from AIAS in Aarhus. 

For any postdoctoral researcher anywhere in the world considering whether to apply, Mamelund’s message is simple: "Apply, apply, apply."

The first call for applications will be announced in June, with application deadline in October 2026.

You can read more about the programme here >