Jonas Stähelin

Jonas Stähelin studied History and Sociology at the University of Basel, followed by History and Philosophy of Knowledge at ETH Zurich. He subsequently completed a PhD at ETH Zurich’s Chair of Literature and Cultural Studies with a dissertation on the history of occultism and on scientific epistemologies of the invisible in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Research stays took him, among other places, to Tel Aviv and Princeton.

Alongside his academic work, Jonas Stähelin works as a freelance journalist—contributing, among others, to the Swiss weekly WOZ—and as a screenwriter. His recent publications include the essay “Towards a Negative History of Science: The Unknown, Errors, Ignorance, and the ‘Pseudosciences’” (co-authored with Lukas Rathjen, Histories, 2022) and the article “Where Is the Renaissance of LSD and Other Psychedelics Heading?” (WOZ, 2026).