Sinergia - Team

Joëlle Darwiche is Associate Professor of Couple and Family Psychology at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, and currently Co-Head of the Institute of Psychology and Chair of the Master of Advanced studies in Systemic Psychotherapy at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She is the former head of the Family and Development research center and is also a certified psychotherapist for couples and families. Her main areas of research areas are family dynamics, coparenting, and couple and family psychotherapy. Her work contributed to developing an evidence-based framework for understanding interparental functioning and its influence on children’s socio-emotional development. She was PI or co-PI of several funded research projects assessing family dynamics with both clinical and non-clinical populations, in different living arrangements, and at different stages of life. She has knowledge of various methods to work with interdependent data, including longitudinal designs. She has published her work in major couple and family journals.

Laura Bernardi is Full Professor of Life Course Demography and Sociology at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and vice-President of the Swiss National Science Research Council. She is the former Deputy Director of the Swiss National Center for Competence in Research LIVES and former Editor-in-Chief of the Advances in Life Course Research Journal. Her major research areas are fertility, family demography, migration and life course sociology. She has published in major sociological and demographic journals on topics like fertility intentions and behaviour, social network influences on family development, intergenerational transmission of fertility and family formation, lone parenthood and health, migration and family formation as well as theoretical and empirical contributions on life course sociology and mixed-method approaches in social sciences.

Sabrina Burgat is Law Professor at the Faculty of Law at University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. She’s also a specialized lawyer (FSA specialist) in Family law. Her research focuses on issues of equality in family law, in particular equality between men and women and equality between types of living community. She also conducts research on equality in access to new models of care.

Elli Mosayebi is professor for architecture and design at ETH Zurich. She also leads the Zurich-based architecture office EMI architects together with Ron Edelaar and Christian Inderbitzin. With a strong focus on housing and its current transformations related to social dynamics in various societal fields, her academic and architectural work puts emphasis on a vital connection between interdisciplinary research, teaching, and design practice. In one of her recent research projects – Vacancy – no vacancy. A performative house of the future – she sought to explore architectural solutions capable of adapting flexibly to changing individual and collective needs. From 2012 to 2018 she was professor for design and housing at TU Darmstadt, where she conducted a comparative study of postwar European housing.

Laura Vowels is an assistant professor of Digital Health in the School of Psychology at University of Roehampton and a FNS senior reseacher at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She’s also a practicing couple and family therapist and works with both intact and separating couples and families. Her research focuses on improving couples’ relational and sexual well-being including developing and evaluating innovative, technology-based interventions to help with relationship issues. She uses a mixed-methods approach combining both qualitative and quantitative methodologies including machine learning. She publishes in major psychological journals on topics such as adult attachment, relationship well-being, sexual desire discrepancy, relationship interventions, and psychological methods.

Tino Schlinzig is a sociologist and postdoc researcher at ETH Wohnforum – ETH Centre for Research on Architecture, Society & the Built Environment in Zurich since April 2020. He studied sociology, communication research, and law at Technische Universität Dresden and Victoria University of Wellington. His PhD thesis focused on identity policies of multi-​local families after separation and divorce. Tino has gone on to teach at Technische Universität Dresden, Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, ETH Zurich, University of Milano-Bicocca, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. His main research fields and interests are multi-​locality research, sociology of architecture and housing, interpretative sociology of the family and methods of empirical and qualitative social research.

Thierry Rossier is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lausanne in the frame of the FamyCH project, and a visiting fellow in the Department of Sociology at London School of Economics. He finished a PhD in political science at the same university in 2017. After that, he obtained three postdoctoral grants to stay at Copenhagen Business School, LSE, and the University of Fribourg. He is interested in inequality, stratification, precariousness, and the life course, and has published on topics related to the sociology of elites, the sociology of science, the social studies of economics, and the sociology of work and employment. He also is a specialist of descriptive quantitative methodologies, such as sequence analysis, geometric data analysis, and social network analysis. In the FamyCH project, he is co-responsible of the implementation of the project’s panel survey, and focuses specifically on the inequality determinants of children’s and parents’ health, well-being, and precariousness in the context of post-separation custody arrangements, using longitudinal and inferential methods.

Anaïs Hauser is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Neuchâtel within the FamyCH project. She completed her master’s degree in economic law at the University of Geneva. Then, she worked as a trainee lawyer for two years before passing the bar exam. After that, she worked as a research assistant and doctoral researcher in the family law department of the University of Geneva. Her previous research focused on the various applications of women’s self-determination right in the context of reproductive choices.

Esther Liekmeier is a postdoctoral researcher in Psychology at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, where she also obtained her PhD in 2024. Her previous research focused on the observation of couple interactions, drawing on behavioral coding to better understand interpersonal dynamics. During her doctoral studies, she received a mobility grant from the University of Lausanne enabling a research stay at Arizona State University, further honing her observational research skills. In her current project, Esther serves as the overall coordinator and is responsible for recruitment and data management for the psychology study.

Carina Sacher is a doctoral student at ETH Wohnforum – ETH CASE focusing on the spatial dimension within the FamyCH research project. As a trained architect (TU Vienna), she gained experience in architectural firms in Vienna and Paris. From 2017 to 2020, she worked as a research assistant in the studio of Prof. Anne Lacaton at ETH Zurich. Carina Sacher has also worked as a lecturer at various Austrian universities. The focus of her previous research has been on housing conditions of marginalised groups and structural processes of housing exclusion.

Gentiane Schwarzer is a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law, University of Neuchâtel, within the FamyCH project. She has conducted interdisciplinary research on Swiss family law, child custody and family dynamics in the context of parental separation. Her profile is based on an interdisciplinary master’s degree in children’s rights (2013, Institute Kurt Boesch and Fribourg University, Switzerland) and a master’s degree in international relations (2008, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva), with a specialisation in human rights. Previously, she worked as a scientific collaborator at the Centre for Research on Life Course and Inequality (LINES) at the University of Lausanne, and for several years for the public and private sectors, in Switzerland and abroad, particularly in the field of child protection.

Giulia Spagnulo is a doctoral researcher at the University of Lausanne in the frame of the FamyCH project. She has a background in systemic therapy, having completed her master’s in clinical psychology at the University of Geneva in 2023. Her primary research interest lies in understanding the dynamics of couple relationships in the context of parenthood. In the FamyCH project, she will focus on post-separation custody arrangements in Switzerland and their impact on children’s well-being, using a daily diary approach.

Magdalena Spasic started her psychology studies in 2017 by doing a bachelor at the University of Geneva. Later, in 2023, she graduated from her master in applied psychology focused on affective dimensions which gave her the opportunity to do her master’s thesis on the development of socio-emotional competencies of adolescents in a school context. Deeply interested in youth’s development and the prevention of difficult life trajectories, she’s also particularly interested in the impact that family has on children. Therefore, she will be focusing during the FamiCH project on the beneficial and detrimental sociological dimensions that influence children’s well-being depending on the custody arrangements in Switzerland.

Naomi Downes is a clinical psychologist and junior lecturer in Psychology at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her research centers on coparenting, couples, father involvement, the transition to parenthood, early intervention strategies, adult attachment, stress and coping. Naomi’s recent experience with the ERES social epidemiology team at INSERM allowed her to contribute to national cohort studies and develop expertise in examining social inequalities through rigorous methodologies. She is deeply committed to interventional research that supports families and reduces inequalities. Naomi employs participatory research approaches alongside qualitative and quantitative methods to ensure her work is both impactful and inclusive.

Inès Kasmi is a doctoral student in Psychology at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She graduated in 2021 with a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology from the Université libre de Bruxelles, where she also completed a complementary Master’s degree in Neuropsychology of Cognitive Development in 2024. Her research interests include the sense of injustice felt by parents after separation, and its impact on the co-parenting relationship.

Julia Sauter is a junior lecturer in Social Sciences at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Her research explores the normative frameworks shaping non-traditional family forms and the role of intergenerational relationships in generating social capital. Specializing in quantitative methods, she applies innovative techniques such as personal network analysis, structural equation modeling, and mediation analysis to investigate these topics. Julia’s work has been published in leading family sociology journals, including Journal of Family Issues and Personal Relationships, reflecting her contribution to advancing knowledge in the field.