Swiss direct democracy, social movements, political parties and interest groups, public opinion, the public sphere and the media

Hanspeter Kriesi was born in 1949 in Bischofszell (Switzerland). He studied sociology at the Universities of Bern, Zurich and Chicago. He obtained his PhD in sociology at the University of Zurich (1976), where he also did his Habilitation in sociology (1980). In 1984 he became a professor for collective political behaviour at the University of Amsterdam. In 1988, he went to the University of Geneva, where he taught as a professor of comparative and Swiss politics until 2002, when he took up the chair for comparative politics at the University of Zurich. He was appointed to the Stein Rokkan Chair at the Department as of September 2012. He has served as the president of the group of experts for the Priority program "Demain la Suisse" of the Swiss National Science Foundation (1995-2003) and as a member of the scientific board of the WZB-Berlin (1994-2002). He has been a visiting professor at Cornell University (1994-95) and at the WZB-Berlin (2000-2001). At the University of Zurich, he has directed the CIS - the Centre for comparative and international studies (2002-2005), as well as the Swiss national competence centre for research on democracy - the NCCR-Democracy (2005-2012).