After working in journalism and history education, Bernhard C. Schär obtained his doctorate from the University of Bern in 2013. His first book, Tropenliebe (Tropical Love), was published in 2015, was adapted for the stage in Basel and used as the basis for an award-winning documentary film.
From 2014 to 2021, he was a senior assistant at the Chair of Global History at ETH Zurich, where he led his first research group, ‘Swiss Tools of Empires,’ on the history of Swiss mercenaries in the Dutch colonial army in the 19th century.
In 2021, he was a Marie Skłodowska Curie Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg ‘global dis:connect’ at LMU Munich.
In 2022, he became an SNSF-Eccellenza Professor at the University of Lausanne, where he led the international research group ‘A collaborative History of Global Switzerland’.
Since 1 December 2025, he has held the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History at FernUni Switzerland.
Bernhard C. Schär has accepted invitations to Berlin, Singapore, Leiden, Paris and Munich, and has completed research stays in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, South Africa, Lesotho and Brazil.
His research has not only been published in numerous academic articles, but has also been widely received in the media and has been incorporated into various exhibitions.
His current book project is entitled ‘Pluralising Europe. A Swiss History of Empires’.
Bernhard’s research interests span a range of topics including empire and science, colonial armies, imperial masculinities, racism, and the 19th-century Protestant mission movement. Initially grounded in the interconnected realms of the Dutch South-East Asian empire, the Netherlands, and its European hinterland, his research has recently shifted focus. He now employs Switzerland’s historical integration into various imperial formations during the 19th century as a framework for exploring new transimperial histories of Europe.
Faculty of History