Team

Applicants:

Researchers:

  • Ahmet Köken, Department of Contemporary History, University of Fribourg, Switzerland

    Ahmet Köken is a doctoral researcher at the University of Fribourg. He completed his master’s degree in political science and history in 2020 with a media and environmental history thesis on nature depictions in Swiss television. Before starting his PhD, he worked as a research assistant at the Centre d’histoire internationale et d’études politiques de la mondialisation in Lausanne (2022-2023) in a research project on the global history of colonial Switzerland. In his current research within the framework of the Counter Media project, he examines the formation of counter-public spheres after the protest years of 1968, focusing on how New Left proponents attempted to build an autonomous media landscape through self-published magazines.

  • Stefan Rindlisbacher, Department of Contemporary History, University of Fribourg, Switzerland

    Stefan Rindlisbacher is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Fribourg. He completed his PhD in 2021 with a dissertation on the history of the life-reform movement in Switzerland, entitled Lebensreform in der Schweiz (1850-1950) - Vegetarisch essen, nackt baden und im Grünen wohnen (published by Peter Lang in 2022). He is also co-editor of the edited volume Transnational, Kolonial, Aktuell - Neue Perspektiven auf die Geschichte der Lebensreform (published by Schwabe Verlag in 2024). As a postdoctoral fellow, he worked at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam (2022), the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna (2023), and the Department of Economic, Social and Environmental History at the University of Bern (2024) on an SNF Mobility project on the continuities of extreme right-wing discourses and policies on nature from National Socialism to the environmental movements of the post-war period. In his current research within the framework of the Counter Media project, he is exploring how, in the 1970s and 1980s, actors of the so-called New Right reformulated these ecological discourses, appropriated protest practices and aesthetics from the New Left, and sought to establish connections with the alternative milieu.

    Latest publications:

  • Franca Schaad, Bern Academy of the Arts (HKB), Switzerland

    Franca Schaad is a PHD candidate at Bern University of the Arts (HKB). Her doctoral project is part of the SNSF–funded research project Counter Media – Periodicals of the New Left and New Right. Her project “Ein Bild von einem Mann” examines constructions of masculinity in periodicals of the so-called New Right in West Germany and German-speaking Switzerland during the 1970s and 1980s. Against the backdrop of contemporary debates on gender, political polarization, and fragmented media publics, the project investigates how right-wing intellectual milieus developed, negotiated, and disseminated specific models of masculinity in counter- and alternative media formats.

  • Baldassare Scolari, Bern Academy of the Arts (HKB), Switzerland

    Baldassare Scolari is a postdoctoral researcher at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB). He earned his PhD at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich with a dissertation on the media representation of the assassination of Italian politician Aldo Moro, titled State Martyr – Representation and Performativity of Political Violence (Nomos, 2019). He is also co-editor of the volumes Highgate Cemetery – Image Practices in Past and Present (Nomos, 2020) and Leid-Bilder – Die Passiongeschichte in der Kultur (Schüren, 2018). Scolari is a member of the research group Media and Religion, which examines the interaction between medial and religious discourses through historical and contemporary case studies. He teaches Theories and Methods of Media Research at the Bern University of the Arts and Media and Religion at the University of Basel. Within the framework of the Counter Media project, his current research investigates multimodal representations of the good, “non-alienated” life in periodicals of the New Left in Germany and Switzerland.

    Latest Publications:

    • Legenden der Valle Verzasca – Erzählungen, die die alpine Lebenswelt erhalten, in: Höppflinger, A.-K., Pezzoli-Olgiati, D., Previšić, B & Volken, M. (Eds.), Grenzgänge – Religion in den Alpen (18–31), TVZ, 2024.
    • «To Be the Soul of Europe» -Images and Metaphors in Pope Francis’s Vision of Europe, in: Knauss, S. & Pezzoli-Olgiati, D. (eds.), Religion in Representations of Europe – Shared and Contested Practices (289–312), Nomos, 2023.
    • Kinder trotz allem – Gender und Religion in filmischen Ökoapokalypsen, in: Höfflinger, A.-K., Jeffers, A. & Pezzoli-Olgiati, D. (eds.). Handbuch Gender und Religion (509–529), Zweite, überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage, UTB, 2021.
    • Wie Filme uns helfen können, die Klimakrise zu verstehen – Versuch über Paul Schraders First Reformed und Benedikt Erlingsons Woman at War, in: Plüss, D. & Scheuter, S. (eds.). Gott in der Klimakrise – Herausforderungen für Theologie und Kirche (47–59), Zürich, 2021.
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