Portraits

Anna Elsner, a literary scholar and a member of the Swiss Young Academy, explores in books, films and blogs how people talk about dying. Her insights open up new perspectives, which are also relevant to medicine.

His life is characterized by variety, while his academic career is driven by curiosity and interest. Servan Grüninger, a founding member of the Swiss Young Academy and co-founder of the think tank “Reatch”, could perhaps be described as an intellectual nomad. He is currently working on his dissertation in Vienna.

On Instagram, he takes his followers back to long-gone times: Gino Caspari, an archaeologist and member of the Young Academy. His life gives the impression of being one big adventure. The price he pays: financial insecurity.

She won’t be fobbed off with light fare: when she was a teenager, Elisa Araldi wanted to read the scientific journal “nature” - even though she hardly understood what she was reading. Today, she’s an assistant professor at the University of Parma, where she heads a research group for data-based systems medicine. What she particularly likes about the Swiss Young Academy is the dialogue and support from people who are “in the same boat”.

Sandra Bärnreuther - a medical anthropologist – studied in Münster, Heidelberg, New York and New Delhi, conducted research in the laboratories of large urban hospitals in India, investigated how digital change affects medical care in rural regions of West Bengal and currently teaches at the University of Lucerne. She believes it is important to have a “comparative perspective” – including for the Swiss Young Academy, of which she is a founding member.