There are areas of expertise within the fields of social innovation, social entrepreneurship, and social enterprise that are particularly important for the sector’s development. That is why, starting today, Forum for Social Innovation Sweden will focus on some of these areas to enhance understanding of them. Through the knowledge campaign “Social Innovation in Focus,” we aim to highlight relevant thematic areas, potential areas for development, and their challenges and opportunities in order to delve deeper into and reflect on these topics.
For the first installment in this series, we have chosen to focus on social innovation and research. This topic is introduced by Professor Lars Hulgård of Roskilde University.
In this interview, Lars Hulgård discusses the development of social innovation, social entrepreneurship, and social innovation as a field of research, and explains why the field has received increasing attention around the world in recent years. He reflects on the challenges facing the field—due in part to its interdisciplinary nature—and offers suggestions on what policymakers can and should do to ensure the field’s continued development.
About Lars Hulgård
Lars Hulgård is a professor of social entrepreneurship at Roskilde University in Denmark. He received his PhD in Public Administration from Roskilde University in 1995 with a dissertation on social innovation in social policy and social work. In 1998, Professor Hulgård co-founded the EMES International Research Network, a collaboration among many international research institutions in the fields of the social and solidarity economy and social innovation. Under Professor Hulgård’s leadership, EMES expanded to include new members globally. EMES publications are available in nine languages. From 2013 to 2015, he served as a member of the National Committee on Social Enterprise, appointed by the Minister of Social Affairs.
Between 2011 and 2018, he was a permanent visiting professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, India. Between 2015 and 2017, he served as a full professor of social innovation and social entrepreneurship at the University of Southeast Norway to help establish a research platform on the social economy and social innovation. During 2018–2019, he was appointed visiting professor of social innovation at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Coimbra in Portugal.
He is also the Danish partner in the COST Action project: Empowering the Next Generation of Social Enterprise Scholars (2017–21); the Danish partner in the Mapping of Social Enterprise in Europe project (funded by the European Commission, 2017–19); and the Danish partner in the RURACTION project, Horizon 2020 (2017–20).