Stephanie Santschi

• October 2026Block seminar “Displaying the Illustrated Book: Digital Curation Module”From October 26 to November 1, 2026, taught as Ishibashi Foundation Lecturer for Digital Curation at the Chair of East Asian Art History, University of Zurich. More on teaching

Current project: Drawing from the Crowd, led as Principal Investigator since 2024. In this citizen science project, volunteers locate Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) on a map to show which real places they depict. It builds on digital projects in art history I have been involved with since 2016. Two of them matter most. The first is the research platform of the British Museum’s Late Hokusai project (2016–2019), which connected data on Hokusai’s works in English and Japanese (built in the research software ResearchSpace, now maintained by Kartography). The second is Bilder der Schweiz Online (2020–2022), a project of the University of Zurich that linked art historical data on Swiss prints, drawings, and photographs and located them on a map through a citizen science workflow. I completed my PhD on Hokusai’s early drawing manuals at the University of Zurich in 2023, summa cum laude.

All of this work asks one question: how to make Japanese images, and the historical evidence they contain, accessible across languages and audiences, while retaining all their historical complexity. The projects combine art history with computer vision, reference data, and museum practice. They need partners and volunteers. Their goal is methods that other projects can adopt.

Path

I moved between museums and universities because each answers a different part of my question. Museums give direct work with objects and their audiences. Universities give the questions and the methods. Digital research connects the two: it makes collections usable for research and for the public at the same time.

During my BA in Zurich (2010–2015), I researched Japanese print and netsuke collections and co-curated exhibitions in Bern and Burgdorf. An internship at the Cabinet d’arts graphiques in Geneva (2013) and an exchange year at Doshisha University in Kyoto followed. My BA thesis asked how exhibitions can present Japanese prints to visitors from the different language regions of Switzerland.

The MA in Museum Studies at the University of East Anglia (2015–2016) took me to the Japanese Section of the British Museum. From 2016 to 2019, I developed the bilingual research platform of the Late Hokusai project there. That work showed me how much research on images depends on well-structured data. I began my PhD at the University of Zurich in 2018, during the project, and completed it in 2023. Alongside it, I coordinated Bilder der Schweiz Online (2020–2022) and created its citizen science workflow.

After the PhD, I worked in cultural heritage for the Canton of Graubünden (2023–2024) and became guest curator at the Linden-Museum Stuttgart (2023). Since 2024, my postdoc in Zurich has brought these strands together in Drawing from the Crowd.