Elisabeth Joris
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Elisabeth Joris (born 1946) is a Swiss historian. She has written and edited several works on gender history in Switzerland, and was co-editor of feminist magazine Olympe, and co-initiator of the 1991 Swiss women's strike. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Zurich in 2020.
Joris was born in 1946 in Visp.[1] She grew up in Visp[1] and has lived in Zürich since 1966.[2] Joris graduated from school at a time when women rarely proceeded to higher education, so she first gained her teaching qualification.[3] She studied history and history of French literature at the University of Zurich[4] and earned a licentiate degree under the direction of Rudolf Braun in 1980. Although she began a doctorate, she found she preferred to study women's history, which at the time was not considered by her professors to be a suitable subject for a doctoral degree.[3] She then worked as an elementary school teacher and a freelance historian.[5][3] She has taught at the Riesbach Cantonal School in Zurich and at the Lucerne School of Social Work.[6] She retired in 2010.[7]
Joris co-founded the group Kritisches Oberwallis and the critical newspaper Rote Anneliese.[8] She edited several works about women's and gender history in Switzerland.[9][10] In 1986, she published a pioneering source book about women's history in Switzerland alongside Heidi Witzig.[4] Joris wrote two articles, Women, Gender, Social Movements (Switzerland) and Züblin-Spiller, Else for the International Encyclopedia of the First World War.[11]
In 2010, she submitted the manuscript of her fifth book to the University of Zurich as her dissertation, finally earning a doctorate.[3] Joris was a co-editor of the feminist magazine Olympe.[8] Joris was a co-initiator of the first Swiss women's strike in 1991.[3]
Joris is married and a mother of two.[5]
