The data about Swiss academic elites made open access are part of the database about Swiss Elites created and managed by OBELIS (The Swiss Elite Observatory). OBELIS’ main goal is to document and study actors in positions of power in the Swiss political, economic, administrative, and academic spheres in the 20th and 21st centuries, and to gain a better understanding of the power relations that structure Swiss society. Over the last years, OBELIS hosted several research projects funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation which are linked to each other and constitute the cumulative Swiss Elites Database. It contains currently more than 40,000 entries on political, economic, administrative, and academic elites which can be consulted online.
The data about academic elites were initially collected for the research project “Academic Elites in Switzerland 1910-2000: Between Autonomy and Power” (N° 143202) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation from the 01.05.2013 to 31.07.2017. The principal investigators were Prof. Felix Bühlmann, Prof. Thomas David and Prof. André Mach. The research collaborators were Marion Beetschen, Pierre Benz and Thierry Rossier (PhD students) as well as Steven Piguet (as IT engineer).
This project aims to understand the evolution of the Swiss academic elites in the 20th century. During this period the modern university became increasingly autonomous, grew in terms of number of students and staff, specialised more and more in research, came under managerialist pressures, experienced a (re)-internationalisation and saw its staff being feminized. These changes have profoundly modified the power resources and the structure within the academic field and altered its relations to its environment such as the political, the administrative or the economic field. The objective of this data was to understand which fractions of the academic field develop linkages to other fields of power, which forms of interaction (networks, multi-positionality, and field-connecting careers) these groups are using and what these connections mean for the autonomy of the academic field.
Other Obelis projects about Swiss Elites can be found in SWISSUbase : Obelis Swiss Economic Elites (ref. 20815), Administrative Elites (ref. 20708) and Political Elites (ref. 20691).
