Alma Mater is the Latin term for one’s former school or institution of formation, the ‘mother who nourished us intellectually’. In my case, I did not follow any of the schools or universities I visited from beginning to end. So what is my Alma Mater? I started my academic schooling at the University of Groningen, to which I still feel very attached. But my academic career really started at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technolgy in Zurich (‘Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich’ (ETHZ)’), where I did my PhD, and worked for almost 17 years as what we now would call an ‘assistant professor’ and ‘associate professor’, until I was appointed as full professor at the Radboud University in Nijmegen in 1998. It is at the ETH where my real intellectual interests and inspiration were ignited. So I guess, that justifies, that I call it my Alma Mater.
The ETH is an exceptionally high-esteemed research university, with a strong intellectual heritage, exemplified by e.g. 21 Nobel Prize laureates until 2019. It is about as large as the Radboud University in Nijmegen in student numbers, but has a budget of almost 2 billion Euros every year (Radboud has a budget of a bit less than 700 million Euros). This provides a lot of space for free curiosity-driven scientific explorations and debate. I still very well remember the extended lunches with PhD candidates and colleagues, where we spontaneously discussed whatever was topical at that time, and where we jointly ‘solved’ many world problems 🙂 The perfect breeding ground for my burgeoning intellectual interests.
It is a bit of a coincidence, that I will be able to end my academic career (I will get the status of emeritus, next summer, 2024), with a research stay from March 2024 onward, at my former Alma Mater in Zurich. During this research stay, I will serve as a senior fellow at the Collegium Helveticum at the ETH in Zurich. Although this is just a coincidence, it gives the feeling that this rounds the circle.
The Collegium Helveticum is an Institute for Advanced Study. It is jointly supported and operated by the ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich and the Zurich University of the Arts. It is dedicated to transdisciplinary research and acts as a joint think tank or a forum for dialogue between academics, the aim of which was to promote mutual understanding between the natural sciences and technology on the one hand, and the humanities and social sciences on the other. Currently, the fellowship programme of the Collegium Helveticum 
focuses on «Epistemologies of Aesthetic Practices», along with some individual inter- and transdisciplinary projects on selected topics. My current research on ‘the affective or aesthetic aspects of urban places’ fits nicely into this programme. But is certainly is also a challenge and joy to explain one’s neo-phenomenological approach to colleagues from disciplines like particle physics or medical sciences, etc. …
The Collegium Helveticum is housed in the former observatory designed by the famous architect and ETH professor for architecture, Gottfried Semper (1803–1879), and was extensively restored in 1997. It is an iconic building, at the centre of the ETH and University campus, with seminar and exhibition rooms, located close to the largest scientific libraries of Switzerland.
