• Energie-, Technologie- und Infrastrukturgeschichte
• Schweizerische und europäische Geschichte (19.–20. Jahrhundert)
• Geschichte des öffentlichen Gesundheitswesens und der Medizin
• Geschichte des Kapitalismus

Electric Liaisons. Market creation and the construction of a transnational powerline network in Western Europe, 1950-1980 (SNSF Postdoc.Mobility with Return Grant, 2024-2027)

The negotiation stalemate on the Institutional Agreement between Switzerland and the European Union has highlighted the transnational interdependency of the electricity market, the fragility of its infrastructures, and the crucial role of political cooperation. However, the current situation has deeper roots: investment-heavy infrastructures, topographic and environmental constraints, as well as historical developments, continue to condition present-day electricity markets. Researching the transition from a national-oriented electricity production system to a liberalized market in Western Europe between the 1950s and the 1980s will provide key insights into a complex and little-understood subject.

My research project analyzes the creation of an international electricity market between Switzerland, Germany, France, and Italy, focusing on the construction of infrastructures that constitute the “grid,” the powerline network. It highlights the role of both public and private actors and identifies their interests and influence on the electricity market and infrastructures. For this historical study, inspired by the resurgent interest in infrastructural questions in the social sciences (the ‘infrastructure turn’), I use a transdisciplinary method inspired by science and technology studies as well as a neo-institutionalist approach, mobilizing public and private archives across four countries. The project contributes to a better understanding of the role of energy production, transmission, and consumption in modern societies.

The project has been conducted in Great Britain (King’s College London), Italy (European University Institute, Florence) and the Netherlands (Eindhoven University of Technology), and now at the Institute for European Global Studies of the University of Basel.

Past Project: 

La grippe pandémique dans l'institutionnalisation de la santé publique en Suisse, 1874-1925

SNSF Doc.CH (2020-2024)

Akademische Positionen

2024 – heute: Research Fellow, Europainstitut, Universität Basel

2025: Visiting Fellow, Alcide De Gasperi Research Centre, Europäisches Hochschulinstitut (EUI), Florenz

2024 – 2025: Research Fellow, Centre for the History of Technology, Science and Medicine, King’s College London

2020 – 2024: Doc.CH-Doktorand des Schweizerischen Nationalfonds (SNF), Universität Basel, Basel Graduate School of History & École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris

09 – 12/2023: Enseignant-Expert (entspricht einem Lehrauftrag), Universität Freiburg (CH)

2018: Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter, Freie Universität Berlin, Fachbereich Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften

Ausbildung

2024: Promotion (PhD), Universität Basel und École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris

2012: Bachelor (B.A.) und Master (M.A.), Universität Lausanne und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (2 Semester): Geschichte, französische Literatur und Linguistik

Preise und Auszeichnungen

2025: Henry-E.-Sigerist Prize, Swiss Society for the History of Medicine and Science

Monografien

The Sanitary Fortress of the Alps: Public Health in Switzerland from Cholera and Cattle Plague to the Spanish Influenza, 1800-1920 (2027, in review)

Guerre, grève et pandémie. La Suisse dans la Grippe espagnole de 1918, Alphil, Neuchâtel, 2025

Willi Gautschi et la Grève générale de 1918 : écrire, réécrire l’histoire, Antipodes, Lausanne, 2023

Zeitschriftenartikel (*peer-reviewed)

Under review, « The Swiss Rescue of the Nation-State: Electric Interconnections and European Integration in the 1950s », Contemporary European History

*« Infections au travail. Histoire d’un impensé des politiques de contrôle des maladies infectieuses en Suisse (1870-1920) », Société suisse d’histoire économique et sociale, 37, 2024, pp. 275-291.

*« La santé publique entre peste bovine et choléra: l’émergence des institutions fédérales de contrôle des maladies infectieuses en Suisse (1863–1872) », Revue Suisse d’Histoire, vol. 72/1, 2022, pp. 22-39

« Anti-vaccination, mouvement ouvrier et disparition de la variole. Tentative d’interprétation d’un mouvement populaire en Suisse (1870-1890) », Cahiers d’histoire du mouvement ouvrier, 38, 2022, pp. 17-32

*« Willi Gautschi (1920-2004) et la Grève générale : une œuvre historique dans son contexte », Traverse, vol. 25/2, 2018, pp. 63-78

« Willi Gautschi, Historiker des Landesstreiks », Argovia 131, 2019

Buchkapitel

With Pierre Eichenberger, « 1918, Granges. La Grève générale », Véronique Dasen, Brigitte Studer, Thomas David, Simon Teuscher (eds.), Histoire mondiale de la Suisse/Weltgeschichte der Schweiz, 2026