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Director
Boris Previšić has been the founding director of the institute he developed since February 2020. As editor of «Gotthard Fantasies» (2016), he has taken up his earlier work on the Alps, where he abolished the concept of the "Alpine wasteland" in a participatory project in the Safiental as early as 2007. Among other things, he led the SNSF project on "Reduit and Mountain Warfare" and is active in sounding boards on issues of planetary boundaries, tourism, renewable energy sources and agriculture and forestry in the Alps. As author of the book "CO2: Five Past Twelve. How We Can Prevent Climate Collapse" (2020) and "Time Collapse. Taking Action in the Face of the Planetary" (2023), he is a demanded expert on climate issues. In cooperation with national and international institutions, he has published further books such as "Mountain Crash" (2022), "Glacier Bursts" (2023) and "Benefit. Utilize. Protect. Care. The Alps in the Anthropocene" (2023).
Mountain Warfare and Reduits in Literature
From the Threatening to the Threatened
The Alps in Swiss Song
Renewable energy sources and the Alpine region
The Alps for a climate-positive Switzerland
The Alps and Ukraine
Future Alpine Electricity. Cultural energy landscapes in climate-positive Alpine communities
Head of Institute
In 2007, Roland Norer became Professor of Public Law and Rural Law at the University of Lucerne, and is full professor of this chair since 2015. At the same time, he is the Executive Director of the Center for Law and Sustainability (CLS) at the University of Lucerne. He also accompanied various projects in Andermatt from a jurisprudential perspective.
Urner Gene: Pfäde, Pässe und Strassen
Andermatt Tourism Law Forum
Interview Luzerner Zeitung
Head of Institute
Daniel Speich Chassé is Full Professor of Global History at the University of Luzern since 2018. His interests include digitalisation, the environment and global economic inequality from a cross-epochal perspective. Speich Chassé came to the University of Lucerne in 2011 thanks to an SNF-professorship.
Co-director of the Graduate School / Curator of the work area "Alpine Futures Literacy"
Jens Badura is a philosopher and co-director of the Graduate School “Cultures of the Alps” and curator of the “Alpine Futures Literacy” working area at the Uri Institute Cultures of the Alps at the University of Lucerne. He is also Head of the BA “Transformation & Sustainability” at the Department of Design Film Art at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and Associated Researcher at the Zurich University of the Arts.
He deals with the cultures of the Alps primarily from an aesthetic and cultural-philosophical perspective, often working in the field of tension between the sciences and the arts. He is also concerned with the question of how artistic ways of thinking and procedures can be fruitfully integrated into processes of transdisciplinary research and what potential this offers for the development of a new “Alpine Futures Literacy”.
"Correspondences. Building blocks of a theory of the genius loci"
Future Alpine Electricity. Cultural energy landscapes in climate-positive Alpine communities
Editing Syntopia Alpina
Aline Stadler has a Master of Arts in Cultural Studies with a focus on philosophy at the University of Lucerne. In her Master's thesis, she explored political aspects of listening. At the Urner Institut Kulturen der Alpen she is responsible for the online magazine Syntopia Alpina and editorial work. Aline Stadler furthermore works as a music journalist at SRF 2 Kultur in Basel.
Student assistant
As a student assistant, Elena Arnold supports the management in various administrative matters and she is also responsible for public relations. She is currently completing her Master's degree in Cultural Studies at the University of Lucerne. She also completed various internships for example at the Cultural Departement of Lucerne and at the Local Museum in Küsnacht.
Secretariat
Angela Zaccari grew up in the beautiful canton of Uri and lives in Altdorf. She has gained a lot of experience in an international environment (order entry, export, organization of events, staff representation). At the Institute, she works in the secretariat and is responsible for day-to-day administration, events, project management and finances.
Research Fellow
Andreas Bäumler studied German philology and history in Basel. After his work as a translator and texter, he started in 2017 as a research fellow within the SNF professorship for literature and cultural studies at the University of Lucerne. Bäumler completes his doctorate in the summer of 2023 with a dissertation on the Reduit in literature at the Urner Institut Kulturen der Alpen.
Junior Research Fellow
Lisa Lee Benjamin is a curator and former landscape designer. She has founded two art spaces in Switzerland and previously worked as an independent international consultant on green infrastructure and cultural development. She holds a Master's degree in Transdisciplinary Arts with a focus on Alpine Cultures, a degree in Plant and Soil Science, and also in Permaculture Design (RMI).
Junior Research Fellow
The native of Graubünden studied literature and cultural studies at the University of Amsterdam. He is currently a doctoral student at the University of Lucerne and at the Graduate School Kulturen der Alpen. For his doctorate, he is working on questions of the literary representation of alpine ice and snow in the context of climate change. In this regard, he leads a transdisciplinary research and cultural project.
Research Fellow
Dr Alona Bilokon is an expert for technology transfer and sustainable development. She is a mentor for the United Nations GCI Programme in Ukraine, as well as a board member of the Regional Acceleration Centre for Innovation, Technology and Start-ups in the Mykolaiv region. In 2011, Bilokon completed her Master's degree in international relations, in 2020 she obtained her PhD in history.
The Alps and Ukraine: Photovoltaics to strengthen regional and national energy self-sufficiency
Empirische Kulturwissenschaft Schweiz
Madlaina Bundi is a historian, author, and project manager. For over twenty years, she has accompanied publication projects from conception and fundraising to implementation and marketing, from 2013 to 2018 as a partner and co-managing director at the publishing house Hier und Jetzt. As a historian, she researches topics with a focus on social and economic history, 19th and 20th centuries.
Archcor
Marcel Cornelisssen focuses on early post-glacial archaeology in (pre-)alpine Central Europe. The self-employed archaeologist studied at the universities of Leicester (UK) and Reading (UK). He has been working as an archaeologist since 2001, since 2005 mainly for various cantons and companies in Switzerland. On a mandate basis, Cornelissen heads the Bergeis project at the Urner Institut Kulturen der Alpen.
Mountain ice. Rock crystal from the Alps in the Mesolithic period
Research Fellow
Sebastian De Pretto is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern. His research focuses on the environmental and social history of hydropower in the Swiss-Italian Alps. He was a fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich and at the Universities of Innsbruck and Trento. He completed his doctorate in Lucerne after studying history and philosophy in Heidelberg, Basel and Bologna.
TETI, VOLUMES
Anne-Laure Franchette is a French artist with a background in human sciences. She works on urban nature and the circulation of plants in relation with industrial materials. Since 2018, she is part of the interdisciplinary research group TETI, which focuses on trans-industriality. She is also co-founder and artistic director of VOLUMES.
Construction site and botany
Junior Research Fellow
Stefanie Hug studied business law at the ZHAW (Bachelor) and law at the University of Lucerne (Master). Since 2019, she has been working as a research assistant for Roland Norer at the Chair of Public Law and Rural Law. Her dissertation focuses on the current state of international and Swiss regulations on climate change law in the agricultural sector.
Junior Research Fellow
Ndjaka Mtsetwene is a research fellow and federal scholar at the Institute "Cultures of the Alps" and at the University of Lucerne. She completed a master's degree in African literature at the University of the Witwatersrand. She has collaborated on several community projects focusing on narratives of movement and place-making in the black diaspora and on the African continent.
Project coordinator and Research Fellow
Veronika Studer-Kovács studied Hungarian Studies and Romance Studies in Budapest. From 2013, she devoted herself to researching Franco-Hungarian cultural relations in the 18th century at the Sorbonne University in Paris. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of Lucerne from 2017 to 2022, where her dissertation examined the significance of cosmopolitan thinking in Hungarian nation building in the 18th century. Since 2023, she has been working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Graduate School of the Uri Institute Cultures of the Alps. In particular, she researches the history and current perception of world cultural and natural heritage. One focus of her work is on the impact of the changing Earth system on the definition and treatment of these two World Heritage categories.
Future Alpine Electricity. Cultural energy landscapes in climate-positive Alpine communities
Junior Research Fellow
Roman Walker studied singing, choral conducting, music education and sacred music. His interest in making music with young people led him to join the founding team of the Menzingen Gymnasium and to become the Stiftskapellmeister at the Stiftsschule Engelberg. He also worked for several years in school management and organisational development. Today he leads the music team at Zurich's old city churches and conducts various ensembles.
The Alps in Swiss Song
Hanns in der Gand - soldier singer, song leader
Research Fellow
Rahel Wunderli studied history and ecology. Her experiences as a shepherdess – on alps in Uri, among other places – were the starting point for a long-term engagement with the history and present of mountain agriculture. Since 2017, she has also been researching the so-called "commons": entities such as the Corporations of Uri and Ursern that collectively manage land and resources.
Uri in transition - Population and science in dialog
Ageing well in the mountains of Uri
Universität Luzern
Chiara Zgraggen works in the project Uri in Transition as a student research assistant. She studies history and art history at the universities of Lucerne and Zurich and works as a research assistant at Swiss Sports History and as a journalist and producer at the Luzerner Zeitung.
HEAD Genf
Mabe Bethônico is artist and researcher, having been professor at UFMG – Brazil between 2001 and 2018. She currently teaches at the École Nationale Supérieure de Photographie in Arles and at HEAD-Genève, having been artist researcher at ESAAA, Annecy. She holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art in London, and received a post-doctoral fellowship at the Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève in 2013, supported by the Brazilian national research agency CNPq.
Research Fellow
Annina Boogen studied Environmental and Energy Sciences and worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in environmental economics at ETH Zurich (2016-2022) and since 2020 at the Center for Energy and Environment at ZHAW. Between 2017 and 2020, she studied part-time in the MA Transdisciplinarity at ZHdK. In her current project she explores the sensory perception of energy infrastructure in the Alps.
Renewable energy in alpine landscapes – Making infrastructure perceptible to the senses
Future Alpine Electricity. Cultural energy landscapes in climate-positive Alpine communities
Kunsthaus Zug
Jana Bruggmann is an art and history scholar and works as a curator. She studied at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and completed the master's program "curatorial studies" at the ZHdK. She worked at the FU Berlin and at the Leibniz Institute for European History in Mainz. Her dissertation project is located at the intersection of image and knowledge history. Since September 2023 she is curator at Kunsthaus Zug.
Research Fellow
Sibylle Lustenberger is a social anthropologist at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. In her current research, she examines the social organization of hydropower production in the Canton of Uri. Her aim is to contribute to international efforts aimed at making electricity production not only sustainable, but also more local and democratic. Sibylle Lustenberger has studied social anthropology, history, and ecology at the University of Bern, where she completed a PhD in 2016.
Maintaining Relations: Community-owned Hydropower Infrastructure through Time
SRF Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen
Andrea Meier has a PhD in cultural studies at the University of Potsdam's Faculty of Philosophy and is a cultural journalist, photographer and filmmaker. As a quiet observer of nature, she faces the slowing down and epiphany of the moment. She also researches and teaches relaxation medicine and understands to apply this inter- and transdisciplinarily as well as practically.
Il Pesch sbatta - The poetry of ice fishing and the rediscovery of silence
University of Westminster London / University of Arts Zurich
Uriel Orlov's practice encompasses film, photography, drawing, and sound. His installations focus on places and micro-histories, bringing image regimes and narrative modes into correspondence. His work is concerned with colonialism, spatial manifestations of memory and plants as political actors. Orlow is a senior researcher at the University of Westminster and a lecturer at the ZHDK.
ETH Zurich
Juanita von Rothkirch is a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences at ETH Zurich (2021-2024). Her research focuses on socio-cultural mechanisms that influence the development of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) for Swiss emissions. She investigates the influence of discourses towards the possible futures of CDR and promotes reflection on the actual effectiveness of CDR.
University of Lucerne
Markus Schreiber is Co-Managing Director of the Centre for Law and Sustainability CLS at the University of Lucerne. He works in the Competence Centre for Energy Law, which addresses aspects of Swiss energy law with a focus on the Energy Strategy 2050. This involves a close exchange with practitioners as well as other universities and colleges.
University of Applied Sciences of the Grisons
Daniel A. Walser studied architecture at the ETH Zurich and the Sapienza in Rome. He teaches architectural history, architectural theory and urban planning at the Fachhochschule Graubünden and engages in research. His focus lies on contemporary architecture in the Alpine region. Walser has published on the architects Valerio Olgiati, Bruno Giacometti, Andres Liesch and Rudolf Olgiati.
Junior Research Fellow
Ariane Zangger has studied Social Anthropology, Sustainable Development and and Religious Studies at the University of Berne and graduated with a Master's thesis on wolf presence in the Upper Valais. In her doctoral thesis from 2021-2024 with Prof. Dr. Tobias Haller she is investigating human-wolf relationships in the Romanian Carpathians. From 2019 to 2022 she was responsible for the coordination of the interdisciplinary project "Silicon Mountains: The Swiss Alps in the Digital Age".
Junior Research Fellow
Elisabeth Nold Schwartz is an artistic associate at HSLU D&K. She graduated in Theater and Dance Studies in 2011 and holds a Master in Fine Arts with a focus on Art in Public Spheres since 2020. She is interested in the complementary connection of theoretical and poietic knowledge, which can be transcended in Bataille's sense and thus produce new spaces for thought and action.
Junior Research Fellow
Milka Lehner studied History, Slavic Studies, Eastern European History and Cultural Studies at the Universities of Zurich and Lucerne. She has been a start-up scholar at the Graduate School Lucerne and a member of the Graduate School Cultures of the Alps since 2023.
Invisible guests. Yugoslav seasonal workers in the Swiss Alps 1970-1991
Junior Research Fellow
Nils Widmer is writing his dissertation on skiing from a social and gender-historical perspective. From 2015 to 2021, he studied History and German Philology at the University of Basel. He worked as a research assistant at Swiss Sports History, as an assistant at the Department of History at the University of Basel, as a freelancer at Radio SRF and in educational projects.
Junior Research Fellow
Sara Šifrar Krajnik studied ethnology and cultural anthropology at the University of Ljubljana. She is currently working on her PhD thesis in the SNF-funded Ambizione project "Reservoirs and Resettlement Policies in the Alpine Region after 1918", under the supervision of Dr. Sebastian De Pretto. In her dissertation project she is dealing with hydroelectric power plants in Slovenian Alps and its impact on people and the surrounding nature.
President Scientific Advisory Board
Member of the Scientific Advisory Board
Junior Research Fellow
Silvano Frei was born in 1996 in Flawil (SG). He studied cultural studies with a focus on philosophy at the University of Lucerne. In his master's thesis, he focused on the European Décadence as a central intellectual-historical topos of cultural and aesthetic modernity.
With the start-up scholarship of the University of Lucerne (since 1.10.2023) he prepares his PhD project.
Junior Research Fellow
Catrina Klee studied Popular Cultures at the University of Zurich. She completed her Bachelor's degree with a thesis on the contemporary significance of mobility. Her Master's degree took her to Lucerne, where she studied World Society and Global Governance with a focus on history. She completed her Master's degree with a thesis on women entrepreneurs and globalization in Africa.
Research Fellow
Jonas Frick is a literary scholar from Zurich. In his dissertation he studied the literary perception of acceleration in the interwar period. In his early postdoc-project, he studied the cultural imaginaries of networked computers between 1960 and 2000. Besides that, he is interested in weirde literature and in narratives about digitalization.
The cultural perception and representation of artificial snow
Junior Research Fellow
Sophie Fäs completed her Bachelor's and Master's degree in History and German Studies at the University of Basel. She wrote her master's thesis on midwifery in Fricktal in the 18th century. Since autumn 2021, she has been working on her dissertation under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Caroline Arni has started. Since April 2022, her doctoral project on the transition from home birth to hospital birth has been funded by the SNSF.
bildfluss-Verlag
Christof Hirtler is a photographer, author, journalist and director of bildfluss-Verlag, Altdorf.
He uses oral history to research the recent history of the canton of Uri. His publishing house has published various books on this subject: "Urnerboden", "Hirt, Tinner und Fugibootschä - Urner Berglandwirtschaft früher, heute, morgen", "Fotografie in Uri", "Singende Seile - Die Seilbahnlandschaft des Urner Schächentals".
Alpine networks of interconnectedness: the cableways of Uri as role players and spheres of action
Foundation Board
Foundation Board
climate landscaping
As part of «climate landscaping», Cedric Zangger develops solutions for agriculture adapted to climate change. He is also involved in the development of solidarity-based agriculture in the Zurich Oberland. For the Uri Institute of Alpine Cultures, he leads the project «Biochar and Electricity - Pyrolysis Plants in the Alps».
Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz
Michel Roth, born in Altdorf (Uri), is a composer and Professor of Composition, Music Theory and Artistic Research at the Hochschule für Musik Basel. He conducts research into musical applications of game theory and cybernetics (doctorate at the University of Basel), organology of contemporary music and Alpine sound sociology ("ropeway singing").
Junior Research Fellow
Kiah Lian Rutz received a Bachelor's degree in Classical Archeology from University College London (UCL) in 2016 and a Master's degree in Visual, Material and Museum Anthropology from the University of Oxford in 2019. She has been writing her dissertation at the University of Zurich since 2022 on the diverse human adaptations and reorientation to climatic changes, i.e. the disappearance of snow and winter, in the Surselva Valley.
Materialities of Obsolescence: A Study of Snow, Seasons and Changing Conditions in the Swiss Alps
Junior Research Fellow
Marzell Küttel, M.A., studied German Literature and Linguistics and General and Comparative Literature in Geneva, Fribourg and Zurich. He works at a cantonal school. As part of the Graduate School Kulturen der Alpen, he is writing a dissertation on the subject of hydropower in Swiss literature.
Progress and Loss. The Contribution of Literature to the Myth of Swiss Hydropower
