Profile
As a full professor in the Faculty of Arts and a specialist in the French-speaking world, which includes France as well as regions that are now Swiss and Belgian, Estelle Doudet arrived at UNIL in 2018. She has been familiar with the institution since 2001, when she began her career as a researcher. She sees her role within the Rectorate as a service to researchers, whose interests she shares. She herself has had to adapt the pace of her research to her new role, which is no easy task for an active academic who, at 46, is still a long way from retirement. As she says, "You also have to know how to put yourself at the service of an institution that has welcomed us with such generoisty, and I appreciate the opportunity given to me by the Rector Frédéric Herman; it is an honour to be able to support colleagues and in particular, the next generation of researchers."
A proper department dedicated to supporting research did not come into being overnight at UNIL. The idea originated with former Vice Rector François Bussy, who suggested that Estelle Doudet join the department in the winter of 2021. One of the first concrete steps in this process was the appointment of Julian Randall as head of department. "It is about supporting researchers by giving them quick answers or referring them to the right people. These resource people can be found both in the Faculties and other departments, but they need to be put to good use in a coherent way, in a clearly identified and visible network, the heart of which is the Research Department," explains the Vice Rector. "Scientists face legal, administrative, ethical and financial issues, but they have different needs and are not all equipped to deal with them."
Estelle Doudet is also responsible for three other entities. The Graduate Campus supports and advises all PhD students during and after their thesis work. "I felt it was essential to include this to make it clear that, for us, the relationship is not just with the students, but also with the next generation of researchers. Even if the focus changes, research is an all-encompassing education that teaches us to see the world in a certain way." The PACTT (Powering Academia-Industry Collaborations and Technology Transfer), for its part, supports the transfer of discoveries into the public domain, in health and many other fields. This entity works closely with Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), but is also available to those in all Faculties who wish to promote the results of their research to the wider society.
Finally, the ColLaboratory "is an entity to support participatory research, with a strong international network, particularly in French-speaking universities, which stimulates ideas around new methodologies and research topics," explains Estelle Doudet. "We are positioning UNIL as a place of invention, exploring other ways of producing knowledge, with people who are looking for new ways and partners who are not always academics."
As a specialist in a "media turning point" that saw writers, artists and men of power, but also ordinary citizens, use various forms of public discourse (for example, the circus, including in Calvinist Geneva) "to influence opinion, criticise governments and try to get their ideas across in a society that was not yet free of political pressure and marked by pandemics and the Wars of Religion", Estelle Doudet works on the humanist theologian Théodore de Bèze, one of the founding figures of our University, an allusion we could not ignore to end this profile of a Vice Rector who cares about her institution.