Research work at Lund Observatory has as a common focus the formation and evolution of the Milky Way and its constituents. Our work combines theory with observations and science support for space missions. Data from ESA's Gaia satellite gives information about the Milky Way and will find some ten thousand exoplanetary systems as well as potentially dangerous near-Earth objects. Astronomers in Lund are involved in programmes for processing and exploitation of Gaia data, and for the acquisition of complementary data from ground-based telescopes (e.g., Gaia-ESO Survey). Theoretical work concerns the formation and dynamics of exoplanetary systems, the growth of black holes, and the progenitors of the brightest explosions in the Universe (supernovae and gamma-ray bursts). Observational as well as theoretical work benefits from the participation in the development of next-generation instrumentation (e.g., CTA, PLATO and 4MOST) and working on measuring astrophysically interesting atomic data in the Edlén laboratory.