Welcome
 
Welcome
 

The Collegium Helveticum is the joint Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) of ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich, and the Zurich University of the Arts. We aim to provide a meeting place and forum for dialogue between the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, engineering, medical science and the arts.

 
 
Fellows
 
Fellows
 

Starting in September 2023, nine early-career fellows will pursue their projects at the Collegium Helveticum along with a varying number of senior and associate fellows.

Yael Borofsky

Early-Career Fellow
Development economics

Noé Brasier

Early-Career Fellow
Translational medicine

Georgia Drew

Early-Career Fellow
Evolutionary ecologist

Emma Mavodza

Early-Career Fellow
Development studies

Bruno Moreschi

Early-Career Fellow
Visual arts

Celestin Mutuyimana

Early-Career Fellow
Psychology

Ari Ray

Early-Career Fellow
Political science

Madeline Woker

Early-Career Fellow
History

Paulo Wirz

Early-Career Fellow
Fine arts

Veronica Akle

Senior Fellow
Neuroscience
University of Los Andes

Tuncay Alan

Senior Fellow
Mechanical engineering
Monash University

N. Asokan

Senior Fellow
Computer science
University of Waterloo

Maneesha Deckha

Senior Fellow
Law
University of Victoria

Somayeh Dodge

Senior Fellow
Geographic information science
University of California Santa Barbara

Niels van Doorn

Senior Fellow
New Media Studies
University of Amsterdam

Katherine Elvira

Senior Fellow
Analytical Chemistry
University of Victoria

Huib Ernste

Senior Fellow
Geography
Radboud University Nijmegen

Kenneth Gillingham

Senior Fellow
Environmental economics
Yale University

Christopher Hasson

Senior Fellow
Sensorimotor Control and Learning
Northeastern University

Makiko Hashinaga

Senior Fellow
Pedagogy
Sapporo Gakuin University

Inge Hinterwaldner

Senior Fellow
Art history
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Ulrike Klinger

Senior Fellow
Communication Science
European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)

Urte Krass

Senior Fellow
Art history
University of Bern

Marielle Macé

Senior Fellow
Ecocriticism
EHESS

Kettly Mars

Senior Fellow
Fiction Writing

Galen McKinley

Senior Fellow
Climate and oceans
Columbia University

Francesca Melandri

Senior Fellow
Literature

Bernhard Mikeska

Senior Fellow
Art
RAUM+ZEIT

Maryna Nehrey

Senior Fellow
Agriculture economics
National University of Life and Environment Science of Ukraine

Vadym Rakochi

Senior Fellow
Musicology
Zurich University of the Arts

Kriss Ravetto

Guest of the director
Film, Digital Media, and STS
University of California, Los Angeles

Lyudmyla Romanyuk

Senior Fellow
Developmental psychology
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv

Lorenzo Romito

Senior Fellow
Space and Design Strategies
University of Arts Linz

Walid Sadok

Senior Fellow
Crop science
University of Minnesota

Thomas Schroepfer

Senior Fellow
Architecture and sustainable design
Singapore University of Technology and Design

Margaret-Anne Storey

Senior Fellow
Software engineering
University of Victoria

Tim Shaw

Senior Fellow
Sound and media art
Newcastle University

Anke te Heesen

Senior Fellow
History of science
Humboldt University

Nikolaos Zagklas

Senior Fellow
Byzantine studies
University of Vienna

 
 
Fellowship program
 
Fellowship program
 

Located in the historic Semper Observatory, the Collegium Helveticum offers academics and artists a highly international, interdisciplinary environment where they can work on their research projects.

 
 
Event calendar
 
Event calendar
 

June 13, 2022   –  June 14, 2022

Situating Knowledge: Natural History Collections in the Digital Age

A conference organized by Sujeet George, Junior Fellow at the Collegium Helveticum.

If you want to participate in the event, please subscribe to the doodle.

© Herbaria Z+ZT

The last two decades have witnessed a revival of interest in plant, fungal and animal specimens stored in herbaria and natural history museums around the world. Cutting across disciplinary boundaries, natural scientists, historians, museum and conservation professionals as well as artists and visual studies scholars have productively engaged with a range of natural history material. These studies have rearticulated how Nature and Science was historically conceptualized as well as have reimagined it for the contemporary digital context. As debates around biodiversity loss gain prominence, the value and scientific potential of natural history collections (NHCs) has been brought into focus. The digitization of millions of specimens across herbaria, zoological collections and museums have realigned forms of intellectual collaboration, and redefined the terms of knowledge production, its possession and of its dissemination. The availability and collation of large data sets have also necessitated new skillsets to parse this data deluge including the ability to manage databank platforms and software.

Using the digitization of millions of NHCs as an entry point, the conference aims to initiate a dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and foreground the multi-sited nature of the connections that have sketched the complex geographies of NHCs. While current research around NHCs have invariably circulated within specific disciplines, the conference emphasizes the immense potential of cross-disciplinary pollination.


Program – Monday, 13 June

08.45
Welcome Coffee

09.00
Opening Remarks and Introduction 
Sebastian Bonhoeffer (Director of the Collegium Helveticum)

09.15
Keynote: Digital Repatriation of Biocultural Collections: Reflections on a Pilot Study
Luciana Martins (University of London)

10.15
Coffee break

10.30

Panel I: Logics and Politics of Collecting
Challenges in Managing and Digitizing Herbaria
– Alessia Guggisberg (ETH Curator of Vascular Plants, Herbaria Z+ZT, Zurich)

Hauntings in the Archive: Recovering Silen/t/ced Voices in Hans Sloane’s Collection Catalogues

– Alexandra Ortolja-Baird (Digital History and Culture, University of Portsmouth)

The In/visible Social Life of Museum Objects. Histories of Record-Keeping for the Digital Age
–Mareike Vennen (Technische Universität Berlin)

 

12.00
Lunch Break

13.15
Panel II: Historicizing the Herbaria
Mining Herbaria to Explore Co-evolution of the Irish Potato Famine Pathogen Phytophthora infestans and its Solanaceous Hosts
– Donike Sejdiu (Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, UZH)

Of Placeholders and Pigeonholes: Locating Switzerland in the Imperial Natural History Networks, c. 1840–1900
– Sujeet George (Collegium Helveticum)
 
14.45 – 16.45
Zürich Kolonial: A City Walk Through Zurich’s Colonial Past

Program – Tuesday, 14 June

08.45
Welcome Coffee

09.00
Panel III: Historicizing Zoological Collections 
Collecting Cameroon from South to North: Meanings and Implications of Locality in the Study of the Colonial Provenance of the Mammal Collections of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin 
– Catarina Madruga (Museum für Naturkunde Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung, Berlin)

Insect Natural History Collections: A Tool to Study Past, Present, and Future Biodiversity Changes (virtual)
– Dagmara Żyła, Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change, Hamburg

10.15
Coffee Break

10.30
Panel IV: Botany through Time
Empire, God and Nature in the first Cambridge Botanic Garden, 1760–1825 
– Edwin Rose, Postdoctoral Fellow, Darwin College, University of Cambridge

The Nineteenth-Century Chrysanthemum Craze: Dormant Things and the Digital Turn
– Nobutake Kamiyaurn (Asia-Orient Institute, University of Zurich) & Judith Vitale (Department of History, UZH)

Using Natural History Collections to Assess Changes in Genetic Diversity Over Time
– Gabriel Ulrich (ETH Zurich)
 
12.00 – 12.30
Roundtable Discussion: Futures of Natural History Collections
Joint Discussion
 
 
About us
 
About us
 

The Collegium Helveticum is the joint Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) of ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich, and the Zurich University of the Arts. We aim to provide a meeting place and forum for dialogue between the humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, engineering, medical science and the arts.

 
 
 

Contact/Newsletter

 
Our Location

Collegium Helveticum
Semper-Sternwarte (ETH/STW)
Schmelzbergstrasse 25
CH-8006 Zurich
Switzerland

Postal adress

Collegium Helveticum
ETH Zurich/STW
Schmelzbergstrasse 25
CH-8092 Zurich
Schweiz

info(a)collegium.ethz.ch
+41 (0)44 632 69 06

 

Arrival by public transport from Zurich main station

Tram 10 from Zürich Bahnhofplatz (direction Zürich Flughafen) or Tram 6 from Bahnhofstrasse/HB (direction Zoo), three stops to ETH/Universitätsspital. Go left from University Hospital Zurich and follow Schmelzbergstrasse to Schmelzbergstrasse 25. Climb the stairs by the green fountain and you have arrived at the Collegium Helveticum. Welcome!