Education

2025
PhD in Social Anthropology
University of Zurich, Frantz Fanon University Hargeysa
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin

2015
Master in Social Anthropology and Sociology
University of Zurich, Makerere University Kampala

Career

Since January 2025
Provenance researcher NMB (anthropological collection)

2024 – 2025
Guest lecturer
University of Zurich, Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies

2022 – 2025
Co-curator of the exhibition „colonial - Switzerland's Global Entanglements“
Swiss National Museum

2016 – 2022
Research Assistant, Lecturer and exhibition curator
Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich

Scientific Interest

  • Provenance research and restitution
  • Museum cooperation
  • Colonial history and history of science
  • Human-animal relations in transformation

Publications

Schwere, Raphael. 2024. “The exploitation of nature: Big-game hunting, plantation economy, and colonial climate impacts” In colonial – Switzerland’s Global Entanglements, edited by Swiss National Museum. Scheidegger & Spiess.

Amstad, Marina, Pascale Meyer, Raphael Schwere, and Marilyn Umurungi. 2023. “Die Spuren der kolonialen Vergangenheit. ” Tangram: Zeitschrift Der Eidgenössischen Kommission Gegen Rassismus 47: 74–75.

Schwere, Raphael. 2021. “Distributed Skills in Camel Herding. Cooperation in a Human-Animal Relationship in Somaliland.” Relations. Beyond Anthropocentrism 8 (1–2): 57–75.

Schwere, Raphael, and Ahmed M. Musa. 2020. “Pack Camels in Photos. A Transforming Practice in Somaliland Retraced in Postcards and Instagram Posts” Carnets de Terrain – Muséo (blog). https://blogterrain.hypotheses.org/16276.

Schwere, Raphael. 2019. “Afrikas Museen haben sich emanzipiert. Die Restitutionsdebatte zeigt es: Afrikanischen Institutionen wird wenig zugetraut. Aber da sollte man erst einmal genauer hinschauen” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, April 17.

Laely, Thomas, Marc Meyer, Amon Mugume, and Raphael Schwere. 2019. “Towards Mutuality in International Museum Cooperation: Reflections on a Swiss-Ugandan Cooperative Museum Project” Stedelijk Studies 8.

Laely, Thomas, Marc Meyer, and Raphael Schwere, eds. 2018. Museum Cooperation between Africa and Europe: A New Field for Museum Studies. Bielefeld and Kampala: transcript Verlag and Fountain Publishers.

Publikationsliste

Projects and Museum Activities

Co-curator of the following exhibitions:

  • Swiss National Museum “colonial – Switzerland’s Global Entanglements” (09/2024 – 01/2025)
  • Mobile exhibition in Uganda, “Mobile Milk Museum” (02/2019 – 07/2019)
  • Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich "Points of View. Visions of a Museum Partnership" (04/2018 – 01/2019)
  • Uganda National Museum “Drinking Deeply! Milk Exhibition” (09/2017 – 05/2018)
  • Igongo Cultural Centre, Mbarara “The Power of Milk” (09/2017 – permanent)
  • Ethnographic Museum at the UZH, section “Milk in Africa–Gourd and Tetra Pak” in the exhibition “Drinking skills” (06/2014 – 09/2015)