Stories about Studying and Teaching
Analyzing complex problems from different perspectives and finding solutions together: Discover how students and instructors in innovative study programs build bridges between a variety of disciplines.
One Friday last October, groups of around 10 people, consisting of students and instructors from UZH, visited Zurich’s famous sights. While to an onlooker this may have looked like a guided tour, there was no tour guide talking about the city’s history while all the others listened. Instead, there were animated conversations taking place between all participants on the walk. The conversations revolved around very specific questions. So, for example, at the Grossmünster church, participants talked about whether retreating into silence can help figure out what makes a life worth living.
At the Lindenhof park, the group of around 40 people was asked to reflect on how an awareness of being part of a long history of humanity influences their lives, and whether it is a comfort or a burden.
The questions asked by participants in the module “Life Worth Living” were unusual, but they are not new. The course, offered at UZH for the first time in the 2025 Fall Semester, draws on the past: “We want to revisit the ancient origins of the idea of university,” says Ralph Kunz, professor of practical theology at UZH and initiator of the program.
Ancient thinkers such as Plato and Socrates would address life’s fundamental questions on walks with their students. “Their vision was to engage in dialogue with people to explore what matters in life.” As the founding fathers behind the idea of university, they always saw it as two things: “A place for scholarly thought, but also a place for encounter and shared philosophizing,” says Kunz.
Kunz firmly believes that engaging with the big questions in life is not only a private matter. Anyone who goes to university inevitably brings their personal views and experiences into their studies. “Getting the opportunity to address these questions at university is personally enriching, but also valuable for study in any discipline,” says Kunz. Because it teaches you a broad range of skills, from the ability to reflect and to express your thoughts clearly, to the ability to value different viewpoints and critical judgment skills. Above all, though, it teaches you to see things from other people’s perspectives.
The new module was inspired by a course by the same name “Life Worth Living” that theologian Miroslav Volf has been running at Yale University in the US since 2014. The idea has since been picked up at various universities across the world. Ralph Kunz is offering the module in collaboration with four UZH instructors in psychology, law, religious studies and philosophy.
The basic structure of the course is the same as the one at Yale. The fortnightly meetings always focus on a central question: what does it mean to be human? What is a life worth living? To whom am I responsible? How can we respond to suffering and death? In preparation, students are given texts to read on these questions from various traditions of thought and faith, and academic disciplines. The subsequent input from teaching staff usually takes place as co-teaching. If the topic is guilt and forgiveness, for example, the perspectives of law, theology and psychology may be integrated.
“I rarely speak to my fellow students and friends about such fundamental questions of life,” says Nina Brander. She is in her first semester of veterinary medicine and finds the course a valuable addition. Studying philosophical texts is new to her: “But it’s a great experience, and I already feel more confident doing it.” The fact that the interdisciplinary dialogue is very respectful helps, she adds. “The participants are from a wide variety of subject areas and at various stages in their studies. But they all try to communicate clearly and effectively. And we listen to each other and take other opinions seriously,” says Brander.
“What I’ve found fascinating, for example, was the text by an astrophysicist setting out his view of humanity, and the view of indigenous American cultures on the coexistence of plants, animals and humans,” says Brander. To her, one thing is clear: it’s less about the answers and more about the questions that this module raises. And these questions also affect her everyday life.
She says the course has made her more aware of her scientific mindset, and has also expanded it: “I now see things differently thanks to the conversations that have taken place in this module.” Previously, for example, she would have seen a tree in a forest primarily as a habitat for animals, whereas now when looking at trees she also thinks about things like growth and rootedness.
In view of her studies, the future vet is grateful for the opportunity to be able to engage with questions such as being responsible for lives: “It helps to be prepared before the moment comes when I have to decide for the first time whether to put a sick animal to sleep.”
She was also inspired by the aspect of self-care in relation to the question of living a good life: “It’s well known that students and professionals working in human and veterinary medicine are disproportionately affected by mental health problems. To me, it’s clear that alongside the heavy workload, it’s essential to carve out time for other interests and adequate rest. The course has empowered me to take that seriously,” says Brander.
Not only does the course introduce students to different perspectives on life from science, religion and their fellow students, it is also structured differently from a traditional seminar. Students and instructors in “Life Worth Living” are on first-name terms, and the module includes a two-day block course, during which participants walk around Zurich together, but also cook and eat meals together. “This also helps to start conversations and share personal experiences in relation to life’s big questions,” says Ralph Kunz.
At the final session of the module, students will have the opportunity to talk with Yale theologian Miroslav Volf online. Nina Brander is looking forward to this. “We’re stepping out of the confines of our subject areas, talking about unfamiliar topics and getting to know other perspectives.”
This is precisely what she had hoped to get out of the course. And she’s not the only one. The module filled up quickly. It will be offered again in the 2026 Fall Semester.
Around 20 students are sitting in a circle. In turns, each one presents their idea for a project or start-up. They talk about the problem they want to solve and how they would go about it. The participants then break out into small groups to explore and flesh out the most promising ideas.
Among them is Gregor von Rohr, a student of political science and economics. He is fascinated by the idea presented by a medical student who envisages a web platform that makes it easier to find participants for clinical trials throughout Switzerland. The group is formed and gets to work developing the idea, identifying technical obstacles, discussing potential cooperation partners and poring over financing.
All this takes place at the “Entrepreneurship Bootcamp”, a course run by the UZH Innovation Hub. Before the students form groups for specific projects, they complete a course that equips them with a basic knowledge of innovation and entrepreneurship. It is designed to be interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, establishing points of reference that cross disciplines and also include non-academic content.
UZH teaching staff in psychology, education and economics are involved, as are practitioners from the world of business. The bootcamps are designed to get students excited about innovation and entrepreneurship and to equip them with the right skills and the ability to apply them in practice.
Gregor von Rohr is not a complete stranger to the world of entrepreneurship, having set up a small business with his classmates back in high school. When he embarked on his studies at UZH in the fall of 2024, the 21-year-old knew that he wanted to learn more about innovation and management. The Entrepreneurship Bootcamp came along at just the right moment.
He was particularly interested in learning about communication within an interdisciplinary team and conveying information in an effective and impactful way with team members. At the bootcamp, he learned a great deal about how to communicate across disciplines, how to give constructive feedback, and what makes creative and productive teams.
“The bootcamp brought people together from different subject backgrounds who probably would never have met otherwise,” says the student. It allowed him to break free of the usual ways of thinking and influences. It also helped that the students weren’t competing with one another. “We were like one young family, all pulling together,” says von Rohr. “At the beginning, a start-up is a bit like a needy baby that needs help to get going. And you have to work together to do so.”
Whether the start-up baby ever actually sees the light of day is secondary, as the bootcamp is primarily a training and practice ground. When students simulate the process of starting a business in a realistic way, they can acquire valuable skills – for example organizing themselves effectively in interdisciplinary teams.
“We want to empower graduates of the program to think and act in an innovative and entrepreneurial way across different disciplines,” says Maria Olivares, head of innovation at UZH. “It doesn’t matter whether they become business owners or employees, the working world of the future will be all about interdisciplinary collaboration in projects and innovations.”
The skills that will matter, she says, are primarily those acquired in heterogeneous teams: being open-minded, thinking critically, identifying problems and working with others to develop solutions. Olivares adds: “Exciting and successful innovations usually arise when people from different technical backgrounds share their perspectives and come up with new ideas together.” This is why the bootcamps are designed to be both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary.
More than 150 students from UZH have already participated in a UZH Entrepreneur Bootcamp since 2019. This format is set to be offered in a new and improved form in the future. To further promote interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teaching, starting in the 2026 Fall Semester, UZH will be offering an additional three-semester minor study program in Innovation & Entrepreneurship, initiated by the Vice President Research Elisabeth Stark. “This project is a strategically important step to promote the teaching of innovation and entrepreneurship and to integrate it in academic education at an early stage – it’s a pioneering boost for the University of Zurich,” says Elisabeth Stark. It is designed not only to strengthen interdisciplinary teaching, but also to create an environment that is conducive to fostering entrepreneurial talent.
The program is a standalone minor aimed at students who are keen to delve deeper into the topic and also want to acquire broader methodological knowledge. The previous bootcamp modules are being further developed and integrated into the minor program in a new form. But they can also still be chosen as individual modules for students who don’t want to dedicate a whole minor to the topic of innovation.
Referring to what the two programs have in common, entrepreneur and start-up consultant Jan Fülscher says: “As with the bootcamps, we want this to appeal to students from all disciplines.” Fülscher is helping Maria Olivares’ team design future courses that are geared toward business and entrepreneurship. As opposed to other institutions that often focus too heavily on high-tech, UZH wants its innovation courses to appeal to students of all disciplines. As Jan Fülscher says: “Innovation is relevant across all sections of society and the economy. We need innovative lawyers just as much as we need innovative biologists.”
Gregor von Rohr also intends to stay true to what he has learned in the course: engaging with other disciplines in an open-minded way and being intellectually curious. His next step will take him to the US for an exchange year. When he returns to UZH, he will continue to look for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary courses to make sure he has the skills he needs to take control of his future and find his own path. Because to him it is clear that life is not mapped out as a straight line and has many opportunities and surprises in store. So he wants to be prepared.
The Bäckeranlage is an oasis in the heart of the city of Zurich. With huge trees, green space, a paddling pool for children and a restaurant, the park is popular with people of all ages. Since the 1970s, it has also frequently been used as a meeting place by homeless people and drug users. This has led to conflicts between the different user groups – and to calls from policymakers for a crackdown on drug users and dealers. The question that keeps arising is therefore: how can this space be used peacefully?
It is not only a politically relevant question, but also a scientifically interesting one, says Chiara Diener. In her thesis, the PhD candidate in German studies is exploring interactions between people in social spaces – but with a focus on theoretical aspects. Alongside her thesis, she completed a module at UZH in which she was able to consider the topic on the basis of a real-life social hot spot. She was interested in the question of whether the spatial design of the Bäckeranlage park is part of the reason why conflicts arise.
The module is called “Crisis and the City: Urban Challenges and Crisis Competence in Zurich’s Urban Space” and is run by the Center for Crisis Competence at the University of Zurich. The idea behind the course is that participants work in interdisciplinary pairs to explore issues that have led to conflicts and crises in the city. Besides conflicts in public spaces, this also concerns issues such as the pandemic and climate change.
Chiara Diener and a religious studies student came together over their shared interest in a specific scientific method for analyzing spaces. The other student had already used the method, and Diener was interested in doing so, too. So the pair investigated the Bäckeranlage, equipped with methodological texts, camera and open eyes and ears.
In the joint semester paper, Diener primarily put forward sociological theories on urban space, and the religious studies student focused on the historical view of the park. Together, they concluded that the space was indeed big enough for the various groups to coexist. However, the relevant parts of the space are not sufficiently separated from each other – an issue that could be solved through structural measures.
For Chiara Diener, the experience was valuable in several respects. On the one hand, she was able to apply a new method. On the other, the cooperation was above all an exercise in openness. “You need to be open-minded to be able to write a paper with someone else, rather than on your own as you usually do. And the outcome is very different if you work with someone from a different subject area who has a different way of seeing things and brings other perspectives to the table.”
Broadening horizons, combining different subject perspectives, and analyzing a concrete societal challenge: these are the very skills that the module on urban challenges and crises promotes. The module, open to Master’s and PhD candidates, is not only interdisciplinary, but also transdisciplinary, and was run by UZH’s Center for Crisis Competence in the 2024 Fall Semester for the first time. As well as covering different disciplines, it also sought to involve partners from outside the university.
During the pandemic, it became clear that communication between the science community and society isn’t always optimal. This gave rise to the idea of a cooperation between the university and the City of Zurich. As part of the three-year project, UZH is also for the first time organizing a course in collaboration with the city.
In terms of content, the course explored the conflicts and crises faced by the city of Zurich, and how the city can brace for future crises. The module is split into thematic blocks, each of which is dedicated to a specific urban challenge.
By way of preparation, the students read texts from different disciplines on the subject in question. The course takes a co-teaching approach, whereby experts from the university and from the city administration each contribute their knowledge and perspective. Participants also visit locations that pose challenges in the city together – such as the Bäckeranlage park or a refugee shelter.
Thirty students from five faculties took part in the first edition of the module, taking the rare opportunity to step outside of their subject areas and engage with different points of view. Chiara Diener was particularly interested in the following questions: what do political scientists think about how emergency legislation should be legitimized in a crisis? And what can sociologists tell us about how measures to tackle climate change can be made socially acceptable? “Experiencing this pooled and wide-ranging expertise was really impressive,” says the PhD candidate.
One of the eye-openers for her was the involvement of representatives from the City of Zurich. She says that the insight into the legal and political conditions and the constraints of a city administration made a real impact. “I realized why certain climate protection measures aren’t as easy to implement as we might think from the outside. Everything needs to have a legal basis and has to undergo a political process.”
“This is precisely why the transdisciplinary approach is worthwhile,” says Eveline Odermatt. The social scientist at the Center for Crisis Competence co-designed, coordinated and co-led the module as a member of the teaching staff. “If we combine the approaches of different subject areas with real-world perspectives, we can find better solutions to problems. This is particularly true in a world in which the challenges are becoming ever more complex and more global.”
But it’s not just the solutions that are better, the learning outcomes are greater, too. As soon as other fields or actors from outside the university are involved, researchers have to think more about their own role, and ask themselves what they even mean by crisis and crisis resilience, and what values they bring to the discussion. “When working with others, this has to be clear and transparent,” says Odermatt.
German studies scholar Chiara Diener says that from her experience, putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is the biggest challenge. “It takes a long time to move away from your own viewpoint and to exchange different perspectives – this one-semester module was just the beginning of the process.”
Markus Meile, chief of staff of the Zurich municipal crisis office, is open to the idea of continuing the collaboration between the university and the city. He says: “We were immediately excited when UZH approached us about a collaborative course.” He believes that participation in the current project has already paid off, referring to the discussions and semester papers that students have written on topics such as heat reduction, the housing crisis and conflicts in public spaces. “This work has contributed insights and new ideas that enhance our point of view as a city,” he says.
The module on urban challenges and crisis competence is to be offered a second time in the 2026 Spring Semester. Eveline Odermatt is confident that the idea can be scaled up – beyond collaboration with the city authority, for example to civil society organizations and the public. In this way, the module could become a model for a new type of teaching that enhances the perspectives of all involved.
Andri Brühwiler decided to take part in the mentoring program as it was a chance to be immersed in another culture. Over the space of a year, the economics student at the University of Zurich met weekly with a nine-year-old primary school pupil whose parents had fled to Switzerland as Syrian Kurd refugees. Brühwiler helped the boy with his academic challenges. This required empathy to recognize the boy’s needs and to see where he was struggling. But most importantly, Brühwiler needed to understand the boy’s expectations and where he could really help and support him.
It was a steep learning curve for the UZH student. The first thing he realized was that his mentee didn’t have a workspace at home where he could do his homework. So they started by setting one up together. Gradually, Brühwiler won over the young boy’s trust, so he felt comfortable talking to the student about his weaknesses. The boy was struggling with German, a little disorganized, and lacked staying power in his learning.
Brühwiler drew on all his skills and experience – both his own journey through the education system and what he had learned at university. Because for students, mentoring young kids is like being thrown in at the deep end – only with a safety net. The mentoring is embedded in a course at the university, with the module “Mentoring for the Next Generation” introduced at UZH in 2023.
Teaching staff from the subjects education, psychology and economics prepare the future mentors for the task ahead. In the introductory sessions, they share their interdisciplinary knowledge with students, specifically looking at what children need to thrive and what makes for effective mentoring. Their core message is always that our brains are malleable and can adapt. What a child can’t learn today, they might be able to learn tomorrow.
Over the course of two semesters, students also attend several group coaching sessions and engage in optional one-on-one sessions to address any issues.
Above all, however, the aim is for students to acquire new skills when interacting and engaging with their mentees. This is what the course is all about: promoting empathy and self-confidence and developing problem-solving skills.
The mentoring module at UZH was initiated by the city of Zurich’s asylum organization (AOZ). The organization’s mission is to provide children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds with access to quality education. To this end, it runs the “Future Kids” mentoring program, which is open to students from various universities and allows them to mentor children and teenagers across the canton of Zurich. There is a great deal of demand for mentors from primary schools, which is why the AOZ asked the University of Zurich if it wanted to get involved, too.
Ulf Zölitz jumped at the chance. The professor at the Department of Economics and at UZH’s Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development studies these very questions in his research, namely how children can be helped to fulfill their potential and how equality can be improved in education. The professor has already run the mentoring program twice. In each edition, around 30 students from different subject areas at UZH take part – and the program is being run for the third time in the 2025 Fall Semester.
The course primarily develops participants’ social skills and emotional intelligence. “These are precisely the skills that will continue to be in demand in the jobs market in future as they can’t be replaced by artificial intelligence,” says Zölitz. They are key competencies that are set to become more important in every occupational field, he adds. The course therefore not only appeals to students who are keen to become teachers, like Andri Brühwiler.
In his reflection paper, the economics student describes how the mentoring scheme impacted him. “Mentoring meant I needed skills that I’ve never needed so far at university,” he says. He realized that patience is one of his greatest strengths. “At the same time, I got the chance to practice being flexible and thinking on my feet – things I used to find difficult,” says the 27-year-old. Sometimes, despite meticulous planning, he would have to change his plans at the last minute – if, for example, his mentee had forgotten that he had an exam or presentation the next day and needed help with it.
The children and teenagers were also asked to give regular feedback to students on the kind of support they wanted to receive. The course is an opportunity for students from different subjects to compare notes and share tips, for example on how to motivate their mentees and on the best strategies to help the pupils with schoolwork.
Andri Brühwiler was delighted to see how, over the course of the year, his mentee became more confident speaking German and was more motivated and organized with his schoolwork. “It was impressive to see how much of a difference two hours a week can make.” The experience also reminded him of how unequal different people’s educational opportunities are: “My parents always supported me. But not all parents can do that, if only because they don’t have the language skills.”
Theology student Alina Ring has an unusual part-time job. The 26-year-old is a chaplain in the Swiss Armed Forces. If, for example, a recruit wants to talk, she travels to Infantry School 12 in Chur. The conversation might be about military or personal problems.
As a chaplain, Alina Ring is bound to professional secrecy. Having said that, if the conversation reveals that someone is a danger to themself or others, she can break the duty of secrecy – but she is not obliged to. “Luckily, this situation has never occurred so far,” says Ring. “Because it’d pose an ethical dilemma for me: Should I respect the fact that someone has told me something in confidence? Or is the priority to protect a life that may be at risk?”
Alina Ring frequently faces these sorts of ethical questions, both in her private life and in her studies, from deciding what causes to donate to, to forming an opinion on assisted suicide. As part of her theology degree she already attended a compulsory course on ethics but she says she felt it didn’t equip her to actually make ethical decisions. And she is sure that she will also face such questions in her chosen profession as pastor and prison chaplain.
In order to gain more confidence in handling ethical decisions, she enrolled in the module “What Shall We Do? Ethical Judgment and Moral Competence”. The School for Transdisciplinary Studies (STS) offered the module developed by the UZH Institute of Social Ethics for the first time in the 2025 Spring Semester. Some 30 students from various disciplines took part.
“We want to raise participants’ awareness of ethical aspects in decision-makng, and equip them to make such decisions,” says Lea Chilian, senior teaching and research assistant at the Institute of Social Ethics and coordinator of the module. Chilian is convinced that making ethical decisions is becoming increasingly important in today’s world. One of the main reasons for this is globalization, as it makes interconnections more complex. For example, the food and clothes I choose to buy have an environmental and social impact all over the world. What’s more, these days we are confronted with a host of moral concepts on which we are supposed to have an opinion.
As well as globalization, technological progress also raises new questions, such as how much a medical treatment should cost, and what decisions we should delegate to artificial intelligence. “Ethical competence is particularly important for students as academics often work in jobs with a great deal of responsibility and decision-making power – and that concerns all fields of study,” says Chilian.
“Doing justice to the complexity of an ethical decision requires in-depth reflection,” says Chilian. A good decision is characterized by an attempt to take account of all aspects and actors related to an issue. And because every academic discipline has its own questions and often its own set of values, it makes sense to engage across disciplines and to explore the fundamental principles of decision-making.
The “Ethics and Responsibility” module involved teaching staff from the disciplines of philosophy – with its specialist field of ethics and medical ethics, for example – and theology. Guests were also invited to talk about how they approach ethical issues in their work – for example a lawyer from a software firm.
For Alina Ring, the opportunity to look beyond disciplinary borders was particularly valuable. This is because her subject – theology – deals with the Christian value system, in which charity and a willingness to forgive are pivotal. “But when it comes to weighing up these values in a specific case and reaching an ethical decision, theology doesn’t offer any models,” says Ring. She therefore found it all the more valuable to learn about the models of ethical decision-making, as developed in philosophy, for example.
The seminar aimed to help students find their own individual way of making coherent ethical decisions. “We aim to provide students with a toolbox of different methods,” says Chilian.
Alina Ring found a good solution in the toolbox in the form of a specific ethical decision-making method. This method involves gathering facts, naming the problem, analyzing and weighing up the arguments, and making a decision. At the same time, the course helped Ring gain clarity on her own values – an essential step in decision-making. She now knows that solidarity, forgiveness, equality, kindness and authenticity are what matter most to her.
The course participants also completed a piece of written work in small interdisciplinary groups which was designed to sensitize them to ethical arguments. Their task was to interview a person of their choosing about how they make ethical decisions in their day-to-day work. Alina Ring was part of a team of three that chose a topic that was particularly interesting to her. Working with a doctoral student in psychology and a music history student, she interviewed a recruitment psychologist from the Swiss Armed Forces.
After completing the module, Alina Ring concludes that it takes courage to make ethical decisions, but that models and theories provide reassurance. It didn’t become any easier for her to make such decisions. In fact, the course taught her how complex ethical dilemmas can be. This is a familiar experience for instructor Lea Chilian: “With interdisciplinary courses, students often have more questions afterwards than they did beforehand. But that’s a good sign – it means they have recognized the multifaceted nature of a topic,” says Chilian.
Alina Ring now feels more confident with her new set of tools when it comes to ethical questions. Coming back to her initial dilemma, she is unable to give a general answer to the question of whether in an emergency she would break her duty of secrecy as a military chaplain. What she does know is that there is not just one answer: “But after completing this module, I’d be able to keep a cool head, think the situation through, and be able to own my decision.”
French fries not only help sate your hunger; they could also help you learn Chinese. This is because their baton shape can be used to form Chinese characters, as discovered by Seraina Betschart when she got a Chinese fellow student to explain some principles of her native language over lunch. The two language enthusiasts have been enrolled in the Master’s program in Evolutionary Language Science since fall 2025.
The game with the French fries was not just for fun, but for mutual benefit. The Chinese student was asking Seraina Betschart for help with a coding task as she wanted to analyze an aspect of the Chinese language using a computer program. This was no problem for Betschart, who has a Bachelor’s degree in computational linguistics. But to be able to help her classmate, Betschart first needed to better understand the structure of the Chinese language – which is where the French fries came in.
The lunch was a win-win: the Chinese student received the support she needed and Seraina Betschart welcomes any opportunity to learn more about languages. While in other people, learning another language sounds more like a half-hearted New Year’s resolution, it is a core part of her life. Besides all of Switzerland’s national languages, she also started learning Estonian a few years ago – a language from a completely different family for a change. The language she currently wants to learn next is Arabic.
In other respects too, Seraina Betschart is keen to learn as much as possible about languages: how did human language develop? What’s the difference between animal communication and human languages? And how will we talk to each other and to machines in future in the age of digitalization and artificial intelligence? These are precisely the questions at the heart of the Master’s program in Evolutionary Language Science, which was launched at the University of Zurich in the 2025 Fall Semester. The two-year program is designed as a single-subject Master’s without any minor subjects. It is run by the Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution at UZH.
The word “interdisciplinary” is particularly apt, as the program covers a broad range of topics and is equally broad in terms of the disciplines it covers. Linguistic research at the institute has been taking place for years in close collaboration with biologists at UZH. For example, a joint study is being conducted into the extent to which the languages of the world have evolved in parallel with human genes.
“Through the new Master’s program, we are once again taking cooperation with other disciplines to a completely new level – including in teaching,” says program director Paul Widmer. Nine UZH disciplines are involved, from philosophy and mathematics to computer science and brain research. Students also acquire digital skills, such as coding. “This is a degree program with an interdisciplinary breadth that you probably won’t find at any other university in the world,” says Widmer.
The students’ backgrounds are also diverse. In this first edition, there is a small group of nine students. Their native languages are German, Chinese, Hindi and English. They also bring different perspectives and knowledge from the subjects they studied at Bachelor’s level. Some studied linguistics, others psychology, history, or computational linguistics – like Seraina Betschart.
For Betschart, the disciplinary diversity was the main reason she opted for the program. “I’m keen to add a scientific perspective to the linguistic and computer-oriented approach from my Bachelor’s degree.” It’s impressive, she says how the questions and methods consistently feed into and build on one another. For example, a behavioral researcher came to a class to report on experiments being conducted using machine learning to decode the language of Bonobo primates.
Both teaching staff and students are exploring new ground through the program. “In every session, we need to ask questions and figure out what prior knowledge the students have,” says Piera Filippi, scientific coordinator for the program. Depending on the question and the technical background, the students sometimes even know more about a certain aspect than the instructors. “Peer-to-peer exchange is key, which is why everyone needs to make an effort to communicate clearly,” says Filippi. The goal is to ensure a shared understanding of the concepts, methods and objectives across all the participating disciplines.
Another challenge of the new program is striking the right balance between the breadth of subject areas and the necessary depth. “By the time they complete the program, participants should understand the core concepts of all the participating disciplines, but also set clear priorities in their study,” says Filippi. They are therefore asked to choose two focus areas and to combine them in their Master’s thesis.
Betschart, who is in the first semester of the Master’s, doesn’t yet know what her focus areas will be. But with her prior knowledge of computer science and mathematics, she can imagine taking a certain direction, namely comparing languages and their historical evolution using data analyses. But first of all, what she wants to do is gain an overview of the wealth of issues, disciplines and research approaches. “The challenge is to put the individual pieces together to see the bigger picture – like a puzzle,” says Betschart.
Students are not left to their own devices. “Because the program is new and unusual, the support we provide to students is more intensive,” says coordinator Filippi. We conduct one-to-one sessions with students to help them choose the right course modules and later to figure out a question for their Master’s thesis.
The students are also well integrated into research. It helps that the “Evolving Language” National Center of Competence in Research is based at the Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language Evolution. This allows students to be involved in interdisciplinary research projects early on.
Seraina Betschart doesn’t know yet what path she wants to take after she finishes her studies. But she hopes that her future job will offer opportunities for interdisciplinary working. Meanwhile, program director Paul Widmer says: “The job market first needs to get to know the new study program and understand the unique skills it gives students.” There are so many possibilities. Graduates of the program are trained in interdisciplinary collaboration, so they will be strong team players with experience in dealing with complex challenges. The possible professional applications are broad, ranging from academic careers in historical linguistic research to jobs in the clinical treatment of speech disorders, for example.
As a comprehensive university with the most comprehensive range of academic programs in Switzerland, UZH provides excellent conditions to facilitate interdisciplinary educational pathways. UZH has been making greater use of this potential for a number of years. It specifically promotes programs that allow students to take advantage of the wide range of disciplines covered by the university. The School for Transdisciplinary Studies (STS) – the first of its kind in Switzerland – was set up at UZH in 2021 and plays a key role here.
The STS offers a course program on cross-disciplinary skills that is open to students from all faculties, and works closely with the faculties to develop an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary core offering with modules to provide direction that often follow a project- or problem-based learning approach. Students work on topical and practical questions under the supervision of interdisciplinary teams of instructors. This gives them a first-hand insight into how rewarding and also challenging it can be to work across subject areas. They learn to bring together different perspectives, to handle tensions constructively and to work collaboratively to develop workable solutions.
The School for Transdisciplinary Studies celebrated its 5th anniversary on 29 October 2025 as part of the Tag der Lehre (Day of Excellence in Teaching).
