Our research project is composed of an international team of scholars with a broad range of expertise and interests.
For more information check out the profiles below.
Team
Thomas David
Thomas David is Professor of International History at the University of Lausanne. He has been working for more than 10 years on the Swiss and transnational elite during the 20th century (see the Observatoire des Elites Suisses). He is actually writing a book, with Pierre Eichenberger (Uni. of Zurich) on the International Chamber of Commerce. His research has been financed by the SNF, the ANR and the NOW. Between 2014 and 2018, Thomas David served as Dean of the College of Humanities at EPFL and created one of the most innovative Institutes of Digital Humanities in Europe.
Ahmad Fahoum
Ahmad Fahoum is a PhD student in international history at the Graduate Institute, working on water management and its effects on mandatory Palestine, 1917-1948. He received a MA degree in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, his thesis titled “Health and War on Display: The Ottoman Red Crescent Exhibition in Istanbul, 1917”, analyzed the exhibition in the World War context.Contact: ahmad.fahoum@graduateinstitute.ch.
Yi-Tang Lin
Yi-Tang’s research interests concern the appropriation on the ground of scientific and technological knowledge in East Asia. Her research emphasizes on the practices and career trajectories of local experts, often Rockefeller fellows, who served as go-betweens connecting international, national, and local levels. She is also currently working on a monograph investigates the uses of statistics in international health organizations and their implementation in Chinese regimes (1917-1950s).Contact: yi-tang.lin@unige.ch.
Steven Piguet
Steven Piguet has studied political science and history at the University of Lausanne (MA, 2009). His MA thesis dealt with Geneva elites and their sociability around 1900. He is a specialist in historical database design and their application in prosopography and network analyses. Since 2007, he has worked for the SNSF research project “Swiss Elites in the 20th Century”. He is also associated with the Swiss Elite Observatory of University of Lausanne (Obelis), founded in 2015 and the technical platform of LaDHUL (PlaTec) since 2019. He manages the database of Swiss elites and collaborates with several research projects: “Financial elite,” “Local power structures and transnational connections.” He is also a research assistant at Geneva University in an ERC project on “Citizen Sciences.”
Davide Rodogno
Davide Rodogno is Professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva), which he joined in 2011. He was RCUK Academic Fellow at the University of St Andrews from 2006 to 2011 and SNF Research Professor from 2008 to 2011. He currently works on a third monograph tentatively entitled: Night on Earth – Humanitarian Organizations’ Relief and Rehabilitation Programmes on Behalf of Civilian Populations (1918-1939, under contract with CUP).
Mathilde Sigalas
Mathilde Sigalas is a PhD candidate in History at the University of Geneva. Her research focuses on the actors and representatives involved within the trade of antiquities between the Middle East and the United States from the 1920s to the 1950s. Her broader fields of interest are transnational history, diplomatic issues and the circulation of knowledges and antiquities.Contact: mathilde.sigalas@unige.ch.
Ludovic Tournès
Ludovic Tournès, one of the coordinators of the project, is professor of international history at the University of Geneva. A specialist of cultural and scientific transnational circulations, philanthropy, cultural dipomacy and US-Europe relations, he has published numerous books and articles.Contact: Ludovic.Tournes@unige.ch.
Hannah Tyler
Hannah Tyler is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Lausanne. Her research focuses on the historical development, processes and impacts of transnational agricultural economic networks during the 20th century. Other research areas concern the interconnected history of economic and political “acteur” like the financial history of international organizations and groups such as the League of Nations.Contact: hannah.tyler@unil.ch.
Associates
Diana Méndez
Diana Méndez is a PhD student in History at the Mora Institute, Mexico. Her research considers the Mexicans who studied agronomy in the United States with fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation and Mexico as a host country for Latin American students within the same program, between 1940 and 1970. Her work is articulated from global history and links the career trajectories of the fellows with the advance of the Green Revolution and agronomic professionalization in Latin America.Contact: damendezr@institutomora.edu.mx.
Caroline Montebello
Caroline Montebello is assistant in contemporary history at the University of Geneva. Her PhD project, directed by Ludovic Tournès (UNIGE) and Hamit Bozarslan (EHESS), questions the scientific, political and diplomatic commitments of the Swiss anthropologist Eugène Pittard (1867-1962) in Turkey, Romania and Albania. Her research fields deals with transnational history, Turkish and Balkan studies and the circulation of knowledge.Contact: caroline.montebello@unige.ch.
Pierre-Yves Saunier
Professor of European history at Université Laval, Québec and former CNRS research fellow (SIRICE, France). I am interested in the history of Europe in the world / the World in Europe from the 18th to the 20th century. My interest for the Rockefeller Foundation started when I was exploring transnational urban circulations in the 1920s-1970s, and subsequently also included the fields of public administration and nursing.Contact: pierreyvessaunier@gmail.com.
Anton Tarradellas
Anton Tarradellas is Assistant in Modern History at the University of Geneva. His research explores questions of transnational circulations, migrations, refugees, nationalism and history of Africa from decolonization to the present. Current project: “From Post-colonial to Global Africa? Circulation of African Students in the US (1950-1990 )”.Contact: anton.tarradellas@unige.ch.
Joshua Thew
Joshua U. Thew is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in International History at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. His research focuses on how American attitudes and ideas about race, ethnicity, and religion influenced and determined development practices in the Middle East, in the 20th century. His broader research interests reside in the fields of community organization, agriculture – and particularly agrarian outreach – health, and recreation as vehicles for knowledge exchange.Contact: joshua.thew@graduateinstitute.ch.