Michèle Hofmann

Michèle Hofmann is the Head of the Research Center for Historical and Comparative Childhood and Youth Studies at the University of Zurich's Institute of Education. She holds a Dr. phil. in the history of education from the University of Bern and has served as a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). Her academic roles have included guest lectures at institutions such as the University of Basel, Stanford University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, alongside visiting scholar positions.

Her research focuses on the medicalization of education, the history of special needs education in Switzerland, and the socio-cultural dimensions of childhood. Her work examines intersections of 'normality' in educational contexts, institutional developments for 'abnormal' children, and transnational knowledge circulation.

Hofmann's expertise spans interdisciplinary cultural history, emphasizing temporal and spatial comparisons of childhood and youth as dynamic social constructs. Her contributions include analyzing exclusion/inclusion dynamics in education and the evolution of terminology for classifying children in educational systems.