About LEAD

Long before COVID-19, Switzerland was hit by several pandemics: in 1890 by the «Russian flu», in 1918–1920 by the «Spanish flu», and in 1957 by the «Asian flu». After that, there were further pandemic outbreaks into the 21st century, but they did not leave a strong mark on Switzerland. Today, we know very little about these past pandemics, partly because they have hardly been researched. Switzerland has a so-called disaster memory gap here. The fact that valuable empirical knowledge from the past has been forgotten over time also applies to other aspects of Swiss health history over the last 150 years.

A team of researchers from the University of Zurich and the ZHAW has set itself the task of collecting and processing data on past pandemics and health history in Switzerland and making it available to the public via LEAD as a knowledge hub. The aim is to use science communication to make valuable empirical knowledge from health history and past pandemic experiences before Covid-19 accessible again.

In various research projects, the research team at the University of Zurich has digitized large amounts of historical epidemiological and demographic data from Swiss health history since around 1850 for the first time and is making them available as historical open research data on LEAD. In a project funded by the Digitization Initiative of the Zurich Universities DIZH, a first version of the LEAD Hub was developed and the first data stories were written by the ZHAW research team. The target audience of LEAD is the general public, media professionals, authorities and researchers.

In a communication project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation from 2023 to 2025, dialogues were established between scientists and the public, political decision-makers and journalists about these forgotten experiences with pandemics in the past. The resulting journalistic video interviews with contemporary witnesses or their descendants about their own or family pandemic experiences can also be found on LEAD.

As part of the outreach project funded by the Zurich Universities' Digitalisation Initiative (DIZH), the team will organise a pop-up exhibition entitled «Remember. Understand. Envision. Historische Pandemien im gesellschaftlichen Gedächtnis», which will be on display at various public venues in Zurich in 2026 and 2027.

The hub will be continuously expanded in the coming years.

Further information on the research team at the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine (IEM) at the University of Zurich.

Further information on the research team at the Institute for Applied Media Linguistics (IAM) at the ZHAW.