Aalborg University celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. In connection with the jubilee, a new Danish book At bygge et universitet [eng. Building a University] tells the history about Aalborg University from the first visions until today, where the university is making  its mark both home and abroad. At bygge et universitet is written by the two historians Maria Simonsen and Mogens Rüdiger. The book is part of the research project ‘Knowledge for the World’ that investigates Aalborg University from a perspective of the history of knowledge. 

The opening of the new university was celebrated for two days and two nights, just like in the fairy tales.  Queen Margrethe II cut the red silk cord and officially inaugurated Aalborg University Center in August 1974. Finally, the university’s initiators could put years of discussions behind them, and the first students could open their books. The vision of teaching, with its new pedagogical thinking, was   different from the classical universities. From the beginning, new paths were taken, including interdisciplinary approaches, project orientation and collaboration with companies outside the university walls. The university’s ambitions were to be modern, curious and  reach out to the surrounding community – and the working-class city of Aalborg wanted a university that would take part in the city’s everyday life. 

At bygge et universitet is not a typical anniversary book, but a critical and analytical history of Aalborg University and the ambitions, challenges and ideas that have shaped its identity and development since 1974. Most importantly, the book is the history of the many thousands of students, faculty and administrators, who have had their day-to-day activities at Denmark’s northernmost university. They also appear in the book’s richly illustrated pages, which presents everything from study environments and protests to a cycling rector. 

Maria Simonsen: 

– With this new book about Aalborg University we try to tell university history in a new way. We do this by making AAU’s many different segments and voices visible, and by placing AAU in a larger historical context of the history of Danish universities. Although the history of knowledge perspective is not explicitly unfolded in the narrative, it has been a central source of inspiration in our way of thinking about the university and its history and is therefore clearly visible in the years of research that made this book possible 

Link: https://gad.dk/at-bygge-et-universitet# 

Mogens Rüdiger: https://vbn.aau.dk/da/persons/104510 

Maria Simonsen: https://vbn.aau.dk/da/persons/113201