Research
PEOPLE AND FACTS
How culture and geography shape people
People and their environment are central to Patricia Felber’s extensive research. The most important impetus for her in-depth and comprehensive studies is her fascination with exciting life stories of people from different cultural, social and political backgrounds. Her work explores the concerns and circumstances of women in particular.
Her first research project focused on women farmers in the Emmental Trub, especially their way of life between tradition and modernity. Later, she portrayed Mexican migrant women and their integration into working life in Tucson, Arizona. For her PhD dissertation, she interviewed forty inhabitants of four Swiss communities about landscape change. In Oman, she conducted fieldwork on how access to drinking water impacted the local population.
Throughout her research activities in Switzerland and abroad, Patricia has written numerous scientific studies, given lectures and chaired panels at higher education institutions. In 2016, commissioned by the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, she published a highly acclaimed report: Recommendations for Equal Opportunity Career Paths for Young Women Scientists at Swiss Universities and Research Institutes. The study attracted great interest among Swiss universities and higher education institutions, as well as among politicians.
From 2017 to 2018, she worked on the research project “Slow University.” Based on an empirical field study, she analysed the relations between the working conditions of academics at the University of Bern and research content, especially the quality of academic research. The project results have since formed the basis for the “Better Science” initiative of the University of Bern’s Office for Gender Equality.
“Research helps understand the world”.
CONTACT
Patricia Felber
Dr. phil.-nat.
8055 Zürich
T 079 353 70 59
