Research Team
Prof Dr Harald Fischer-Tiné
Principal Investigator, Professor for History of the Modern World
See contact details.
Dr Monique Ligtenberg
Project Coordinator, Postdoctoral Researcher
Monique is a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the Chair for History of the Modern World, where she has been studying the provenance of ETH Zurich’s natural history collections since August 2024. In 2023, she defended her dissertation on historical entanglements in the field of medicine between German-speaking Europe and the Dutch East Indies. Her research focuses on global history, the history of knowledge and science, the history of natural history collections & collectors and the modern history of Southeast Asia. See contact details.
Dr Philipp Krauer
Senior Researcher
Philipp is a Senior Researcher working on the SNSF-funded project Engineering Empires from the Margins: Global Techno-Colonialism and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (c. 1860–1980). He received his PhD from ETH Zurich in 2022 with a dissertation on Swiss mercenaries in the Dutch colonial army, published in 2024 under the title Swiss Mercenaries in the Dutch East Indies: A Transimperial History of Military Labour. From 2021 to 2025, he was employed as an archivist at the State Archives of the Canton of Schwyz. He was also affiliated with the project Moral and Economic Entrepreneurship: A Collaborative History of Global Switzerland (1800–1900) at the University of Lausanne. In addition, he holds a Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Data Management and Information Technologies from the University of Zurich. See contact details.
Sarujan Theivendran M.A. UNIFR
Doctoral candidate, Scientific Assistant
Sarujan is a doctoral candidate at the Chair for History of the Modern World at ETH Zurich (since August 2025), where he works on the SNSF-funded project Engineering Empires from the Margins: Global Techno-Colonialism and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (c. 1860–1980) His doctoral research examines global entanglements and disciplinary transformations within geology, focusing on the trajectories of ETH professor of geology Albert Heim and his son Arnold Heim, a petroleum geologist active worldwide. He holds an M.A. in Contemporary History from the University of Fribourg/Freiburg, with a master’s thesis on Swiss development aid in Sri Lanka (1961–1982), and has professional experience in archival and museum contexts. See contact details.
Sasha Müri B.A. UZH
Research Assistant
Sasha is doing her master’s degree in Contemporary History and religious studies at the University of Zurich. She works as a research assistant on the ETH-Decol project. See contact details.
Carmen Bortolin B.A. UZH
Research Assistant
Carmen is doing her master’s degree in Contemporary History and Cultural Analysis at the University of Zurich. Besides her position as a teaching assistant at ETH she also works for the publishing house Hier und Jetzt and is an editor at the student history journal etü. See contact details.