Eliot Gisel
Communications

As Communications Associate, Eliot Gisel supports Head of Communications Mick Lehmann in the Collegium’s everyday communication needs and in strengthening its public profile. To this, Eliot Gisel (born 1987 in Stans, CH) brings several years of experience working in the areas of design, editing, writing, and community organizing. Eliot is a 2019 Swiss Design Award recipient and a 2015 grantee by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. After a BFA in graphic design and an MA in arts and culture journalism, Eliot is now pursuing an MA in history at the University of Zurich. Eliot also works as a research assistant in the project “Sexual Abuse in the Context of the Catholic Church in Switzerland” at the University of Zurich.

In their own research, Eliot mainly engages with topics at the intersection of environmental history and history of science. Currently, they are working on their master’s thesis, which examines how and why polar bear conservation biologist in Greenland in the 1970s redeployed Arctic hunting—White trophy hunting technology on the one hand and Inuit traditional hunters on the other—as they sought to more systematically collect data and samples on this top predator. Another interconnected research interest of Eliot’s is the history of science on persistent pollution in the Arctic through environmental samples, especially from large mammals, and the various cryopolitics and toxic temporalities that defined this research.