Dora Borer (Research Associate)
She graduated from the University of Basel in Cultural Anthropology, Media Studies, and science of religion. She is research associate of Art.School.Differences and is currently pursuing a PhD on the intersection of women, identity, politics, and religion by conducting an inquiry on the subjective self-depictions and ascription of Muslim women in the context of migration. She works as administrative assistant in the Institute for Art Education (IAE) and the Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts (ICS) at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and has dealt with exclusion and prospects of children in the context of migration as a member of parent advisory boards on various school levels and in selected publications. Borer has also been elected judge in the Social Security Court in Basel for the 2016–2021 term.
Maëlle Cornut (Research Associate)
is an artist and alumna of the research Master CCC of the HEAD – Genève, Haute école d’art et de design. In her artistic work, Cornut creates installations using drawings, animation clips, and objects to analyse societal and gender issues. Her work focuses on the influence of society and science on the individual’s construction. Her artistic research combines concepts borrowed from gender studies, sociology, and biology as well as references from science fiction. In 2016, her work has been exhibited in several solo shows including the Milkshake Agency in Geneva and Lokal-Int in Biel. Most recently, she has developed a project on urban issues during a residency in Bulgaria.
Serena O. Dankwa (Dr. des.) earned her PhD from the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Berne. Specialized in the study of gender and sexuality in West Africa her doctoral project focused on practices of female friendship and same-sex intimacy in postcolonial Ghana. This project was affiliated to the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana und the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Columbia University in New York and supported by the Swiss Gender Graduate School and the Swiss National Science Foundation. 2010-2011 she was the “Sarah Pettit Fellow“ of the LGBT Studies program at Yale University. Besides her academic work she freelances as a music journalist and broadcaster with SRF2 Kultur.
Carmen Mörsch (Supervision)
is head of the Research Institute for Art Education (IAE) at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Her research interests include the history and present of artists in museum and gallery education as well as artists in schools; collaborative and transformative practices in art and education; art education and postcolonial theory. She has been trained and worked as an artist, art educator and cultural studies scholar. From 2003–2008, she worked as professor of art and textiles education in the Department of Cultural Studies at Carl von Ossietzky University, Oldenburg. Mörsch has continuously taught in art schools and universities, and has been planning bachelor and master programmes in art education and cultural studies innovating several curricula since 2004. Since 2003, she conducted several team-based action-research and development projects for the German Ministry of Research and Education and for the documenta 12 education programme. Mörsch is a member of the network Another Roadmap for Art Education which unites researchers and practitioners who seek to analyse and develop art education from an emancipatory and decolonising perspective. Among others, Mörsch recently published “Time for Cultural Mediation,” an online publication in 2015 commissioned by Pro Helvetia.
Philippe Saner (Leadership of project, Research Associate)
After studies in Sociology, Political Science and Media Studies at the universities of Bern, Ljubljana and Lucerne, Philippe graduated in 2014 with a master thesis on the reproduction of social inequalities by and through the Swiss higher education field. Since october 2013 he was a research associate and co-leader of project (together with Sophie Voegele) at the University of the Arts Zurich. He teached qualitative research methods in the Master Art Education at Zurich University of the Arts. Together with Catrin Seefranz he co-authored “Making Differences: Schweizer Kunsthochschulen” in 2012, a preliminary study founding the basis for Art.School.Differences. His research interests and publications include the following areas: Sociology of Education, sociology of the art field and research on (global) social inequalities; further research interests include the sociology of economy and financial markets as well as political economy and theory. Since January 2017 he is working as a research associate and doctoral student in the project „Facing Big Data: Methods and skills needed for a 21st century sociology“, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) within the National Research Programme 75 on Big Data at the department of sociology at the University of Lucerne.
Pauline Vessely (Research Associate)
PhD in Sociology of the Arts, researching and teaching at the l’Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, for Art.School.Differences research associate at the HEAD – Genève. Her sociological research is focussed on dance from a gender perspective (sociology of works, institutions and the professional field) and the formation of professional musicians and artists as well as concepts of cultural mediation. Her theses deals with representations of femininity in Cuban ballet in relation with the ideology of the revolution. She is associated researcher at the CERLIS (Centre de Recherche sur les Liens Sociaux, Université Paris Descartes/CNRS) and teaches sociology of popular cultures and sociology and history of dance at the department of Médiation Culturelle at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 as well as at the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine d’Angers.
Sophie Vögele (Leadership of project, Research Associate)
Research associate at the Institute for Art Education, University of the Arts Zurich Sophie has the project leadership with Philippe Saner for Art.School.Differences. She has a rich experience in implementing projects within Higher Education Institutions, has teaching experience at York University, the University of Basel, the BFH (University of Applied Sciences Bern), the ZHdK, and the FHNW Academy of Art and Design. After her graduation in Gender Studies at the University of Basel she pursues her dissertation project at York University in Toronto. Her research interest is in processes of Othering, related institutionalized mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion and theories of critique. Thereby, she applies a queer-feminist and postcolonial perspective. Her experience along to the field of Higher Education is in asylum seeking processes in Switzerland. Since 2014 she is an associated member of the doctoral programm “Migration and Postcoloniality Meet Switzerland” at the University of Fribourg. She also did fieldwork in Rajasthan, India working on processes of decentralization and women’s rights which resulted in the following publications: “Gender, caste and social change: Effects of the reservation for Elected Women Representatives in rural Rajasthan” 2013 with Book Bazar, as well as “Adopting Western Approaches: The ‘Millennium Development Goal’ (MDG3) and Implications of ‘Orientalism'” 2012 with Indian Publishers Distributors. Another interest of hers is on the performativity of Bollywood-Film and the impact of diasporic experience.
Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa
is collaborating with the IAE on the ‘Decolonizing Artistic Education, which a research project that the IAE is developing in partnership with the Nagenda International Academy of Art & Design (NIAAD), Uganda. She is also analysing curricula and promotional materials for Art School Differences research project. As an artist, Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa works in a range of media including installation, sound, video, photography, printmaking, drawing and text. Since 2011 she has been researching the legacies of British colonialism in East Africa, among other things, in the field of visual arts education in Uganda.
Prof. Xavier Bouvier (HEM), Prof. Lysianne Léchot (HEAD), Prof. Anne-Catherine Sutermeister (HEAD) and Prof. Carmen Mörsch (ZHdK) have been accompanying and supporting the project from the beginning and are representing it at the director’s board of each University.
The following persons were involved during the first period of the project:
Tina Bopp (Research Associate in 2014)
Research Associate the Centre for Gender Studies (University of Basel). Main research areas and interests are located within the fields of Postcolonial Studies, Critical Border Studies, Feminist Epistemology and Critique of Science, Participative Action Research/Militant Research, Economy of Exploitation, and Politics of Resistance.
Catrin Seefranz (Project leader of the pre-study Making Differences and main initiator of Art.School.Differences, 2013-2014)
Research associate at the University of the Arts Zurich (Switzerland), Institute for Art Education (IAE). With an academic background in Latin American and Cultural Studies and practical experience in the art world (e.g. documenta 12 and Viennale) her research interests range from Latin American, particularly Brazilian modernisms to today’s art field and it’s institutions, trying to contribute to a critique of hegemonialities and colonialities within the field of art. She was project leader of Making Differences and co-author of the related study (2012) and is part of the transnational research network Another Roadmap initiated by the IAE. She has recently published the book Tupi Talking Cure (2013) about the appropriations of Freud and psychoanalysis within anthropophagic modernism in Brazil and is now researching the configurations of emancipatory and pedagogic modernisms in Bahia, Brazil. Her interest in de-privileging the art field is the basis for cultural initatives and projects, e.g. kültür gemma!