Dr Melissa Rérat is currently a postdoctoral researcher (SNSF Return Grant) at the University of Basel. She started her research project "The Role of Art Schools in the Construction of Art History as a Discipline" at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in 2023 with a Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship from the SNSF. Previously, she was a scientific collaborator at the Swiss Institute for Art Research (SIK-ISEA) and a lecturer in New Media and Video Art at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Her doctoral thesis in Art History and Sociology (defended in 2020, published in 2022) examined the social construction of video art through discourse in the 1970s. After participating in the SNSF DORE research project on “Crystallisation Sites of Swiss Art in the 1970s” (2011–2014), she published a study dedicated to video art produced by women (“L’Art vidéo au féminin,” 2014). Her research interests include the history of art schools, art history as a discipline, the intersection of sociology and art history, the interaction between contemporary art, modern art, and art history, contemporary art in Central Europe, video art and new media, and gender issues in contemporary art.