Lic. phil. Philippe Dallais

Born in Geneva, Philippe Dallais studied social and cultural Anthropology, archeology and art history at the University of Neuchâtel. He has done extensive research in Japan since 1991, particularly in Hokkaido. His research interests include the Ainu people and their cultural heritage, as well as the early and contemporary relations between Switzerland and Japan. His fields of research and expertise are Japan, Ainu, museum, visual, heritage, and digital Studies. He also works as consultant on heritage issues and as cultural entrepreneur. As visual anthropologist his research centres on nineteenth-century and contemporary photography in Asia with a focus on Japan and Ainu photography. As museologist and curator, he participated to numerous exhibition projects. He collaborated several years with the Museum of ethnography of Neuchâtel, he initiated and co-curated the exhibition “Imagine Japan” (2014-2015). From 2004 to 2011, he was Lecturer in Visual and Japan anthropology at the University of Zurich. He was responsible for the photographic collections of the Department of Visual Anthropology at the Ethnography Museum of the University of Zurich. He is currently running a research project on the Swiss photographer Pierre Rossier who worked in China, Japan, and Siam between 1858 and 1862.