Jenny Hällen-Hedberg joined the University of Luxembourg in 2008 and is currently Head of the International Relations Office (IRO). Read about her work at the IRO

Tell us about yourself and your professional background 

I am Swedish, from the university city of Lund where I also went to the university’s kindergarten. I think maybe this is the reason why I always return to the university world after a while in other domains. Nothing else seems serious enough to me! (smile).I really enjoy working with students and professors and to get updated on new research all the time. I stared my career in private companies, working in the design/clothing industry in Hong Kong and in Norway. Then I went back to my hometown and joined Lund University and after a few years I became Director of Lund University international office for 7 years. I came to Luxembourg because my husband was posted here and I worked as a translator at Euroscript and later as an administrator at the European Court of Auditors where I worked before joining the university.

When and why did you join the International Relations Office of the University of Luxembourg?

I watched the University of Luxembourg grow and was interested to go back to the university world. I contacted the president of the university and when they had an opening they asked me to come for interviews, one year later. I started in 2008.

What were/are the main challenges for the International Relations Office?

We were an extremely small team, consisting of myself, the vice-rector, who had many other portfolios, and his secretary. It was challenging in terms of time, since this is a truly international university from the start, with an amazing amount of international projects, exchanges, visits etc. The team has now grown, and we also have new responsibilities. But I feel that overall, we have more time to focus on the important issues, work is not on fire brigade - level anymore.

What do you consider as the main achievements of the office?

Together with the other offices on central administration level and the faculties, we have put Luxembourg on the map of higher education and research. It is rarely the case that people look surprised when I talk about the University of Luxembourg anymore.

We have developed a great programme for “Global Exchange” with top universities around the world for our students, and we have increased the possibilities to exchange not only for students but also for staff. We have also worked with the strategic effort of placing the University of Luxembourg in the rankings which has been very successful, For example we were nominated #2 in the world for international outlook by Times Higher education last year.

Tells us a little bit about the future strategy of the IRO.

We will continue our efforts to market the University of Luxembourg abroad through our instruments like the Global Exchange, Euraxess, UniGR, Erasmus + etc. We will try to increase the participation of our university in the Erasmus+ applications. Also we will continue strengthening the relations with some strategic partner universities on top level in the world.

What are your hobbies?

I have little time for hobbies for the moment since I work and travel a lot.  But I live close to a beautiful natural reserve park in Luxembourg called Aarnescht and I try to enjoy that. I love to go jogging there, or to bike there with my husband and my daughter. I have two rather big gardens, one in Luxembourg and one in Sweden to take care of. I also sing in a Swedish choir, play tennis regularly with my friend Lotti, try to keep up the communication with my family in Sweden and my girls in the UK, I read a lot and recently I went back to study Chinese, which is an interest of mine since I was 18 or so.