Teaching

2024 Spring: “BA Research Seminar: Art as a Means of Historical Inquiry” – UZH History Department, Cross-listed at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK).

In this inter-university teaching collaboration between the University of Zurich (UZH) and the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), we develop didactical tools for historians and artists to explore each other’s fields and inspire critical ways of engaging with the past. Over four semesters, UZH undergraduates collaborate with instructors and students from ZHdK as an inter-university team and develop the contents and strategies necessary to teach historical research as a creative and exploratory process. Unlike conventional uses of art as a source of information in historiography, we engage in artistic work as a cognitive process that helps identify tensions, voices and perspectives otherwise hidden by the archive.

The materials created during the funding period will be made available on our prospective online platform. Teaching segments include mapping, storytelling, audience engagement, and non-textual communication around specific historical problems. The segments are implementable as semester-long curricula, or as individual teaching blocs in research design workshops. Built on a solid foundation of critical questioning, analytical writing and multivariant problem solution –– the bedrock of the humanities -– the projects we pursue shall stimulate scientific outreach, civil engagement, and creative problem solving beyond the humanities.

2024 Summer School: “Art as a Means of Historical Inquiry: The Living Environment of an Organic Farm” – UZH History Department and the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). June 10–14, 2024, Hof Blum, Samstagern ZH (Switzerland).

This inter-university workshop brings together historians and artists to explore each other’s fields and inspire critical ways of engaging with the past. Developing and realizing small projects as interdisciplinary groups, historians collaborate with the program in Transdisciplinary Studies in the Arts at ZHdK. Inter-university teams identify and develop essential questions and strategies necessary to practice historical research as a creative and exploratory process. Our colleagues from ZHdK are instructors, graduate students and professional artists in a broad range of fields, including photography, visual arts, music, theater, production management, and curatorial studies. Familiarizing ourselves with the history of the living environment, we engage in artistic work as a cognitive process that helps identify tensions, voices and perspectives otherwise hidden by the archive.

2024 Fall: BA Research Seminar “The Japanese Empire in Ecological Perspective” – History Department.

2024 Fall: “MA/PhD Colloquium in Global History” – History Department. Co-teaching with Martin Dusinberre.

2025 Spring: MA Methods Seminar “Experiences of Migration and Displacement: Art as a Means of Historical Inquiry” – History Department.

2025 Spring: “MA/PhD Colloquium in Global History” – History Department. Co-teaching with Martin Dusinberre.