Research

The Ethnographic Museum is a research and teaching museum at the University of Zurich. The cultural heritage gathered here for research is stored responsibly and, when possible, compiled into a digital form and made accessible for research purposes.

Corresponding to the source material as well as the facultative focus of the museum’s research assistants, the focus of our research is in the areas of the ethnology of religion, style of art, art and the history of art and the ethnology of technology, whereby sociological and psychological questions regarding changes in culture and the acculturation are also considered.

Research areas are thereby touched – from constantly new perspectives – which have in the past decades produced essential works at the museum.

Since 2008 there is a new special concentration at the Ethnographic Museum on the research of practical knowledge in cultures, with a focus on expertise, tradition of knowledge and the confrontation of slowly depreciating knowledge in modern times. The museum’s research, teaching, collections and public work especially benefit from our own restorers who can incorporate the practical knowledge and technical expertise of foreign cultures and thus conduct research close to the materials and science at hand.