The University of Gothenburg, founded in 1891, is one of Sweden’s largest and oldest universities. It has over 53,000 students, 2,000 doctoral candidates, and 6,700 staff members across eight faculties and 38 departments. Within the Faculty of Education, the Department of Education and Special Education is one of the university’s largest departments, with about 230 staff members.

The MapIE project is situated within the FUR-group, a so-called strong research environment at the department led by Professor Monica Rosén. FUR focuses on individual differences and the effects of social, educational, and environmental factors on achievement and abilities. The FUR group has 10 professors/associate professors, 8 lecturers/postdocs, and 15 PhD students. It oversees three major large-scale research infrastructures, including the Evaluation Through Follow-up (ETF/UGU in Swedish), which is a large cohort-sequential database used for evaluating schools and education in Sweden. The ETF database covers nationally representative samples from 11 birth cohorts, born from 1948 to 2010. Additionally, the FUR-group runs three research schools offering methodological training in educational assessment and quantitative research methods for PhD students and post-doctoral fellows nationwide.