Restricted walking. History of pedestrian mobility in the automotive age (Switzerland, 1920-2020)
SNF-Ambizione Stipendium, Dauer 2025–2029
The autocratic automobile? A political history of the car in Switzerland (1950-2000)
This study aimed to understand the scientific, political and social controversies that have accompanied the development of individual motorised traffic in Switzerland during the second half of the 20th century. Motorisation and the democratisation of the car have often been presented as inevitable. Environmental concerns and oppositions were often ignored or simply considered as conservative “resistances to progress”. Nevertheless, countless committees and local groups opposing excessive concreting, consumerism and the omnipresence of cars were born during the Grand Acceleration of the Anthropocene (1950-2000), including in Switzerland. These groups focused on the financial, environmental, health and social cost of the increase in cars and, as a result, attempted to curb these costs or to propose alternative forms of transport.
Their claims were marginalised, channelled and, at times, absorbed by the political authorities. In this perspective, the massive development of cars was the result of political struggles where the interest of the car industry and the automobile clubs held predominance.
This research focused on two areas corresponding to two types of controversy, 1) infrastructure ; 2) pollution. These areas were addressed through several case studies namely 1) controversies about highway construction and to road projects (main case studies: Geneva-Lausanne; Martigny-Brig) ; 2) the political regulation of pollution (case study: use of leaded gasoline).
The Swiss direct democracy system theoretically offers opportunities to oppose developments considered as being against the interests of society. This project showed how the motorization and its negative externalities happened in this specific political framework.
SNSF Postdoc.Mobility, Rachel Carson Center, Munich ; Ecole urbaine de Lyon & SNSF Postdoc.Mobility return grant, EPFL, Laboratory of urban sociology, Dauer: 2021–2024
Des migrant·e·s et des revenant·e·s. Une histoire des réfugié·e·s hongrois·es en Suisse (1956-1963) [Migrants and Revenants. A History of Hungarian Refugees in Switzerland (1956-1963)]
Ph.D in Contemporary History at the University of Fribourg, Dauer: 2012–2019
