Empirische Kulturwissenschaft Schweiz EKWS

What Empirische Kulturwissenschaft Schweiz EKWS does

Empirische Kulturwissenschaft Schweiz EKWS is a Basel-based scholarly society (Verein) founded in 1896 as the Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Volkskunde, representing empirical cultural science as an academic discipline in Switzerland. It operates as the only Switzerland-wide network dedicated specifically to this field, serving academic researchers, students, museums and cultural institutions (including Museum der Kulturen Basel and Historisches Museum Thurgau), and civil-society cultural professionals across sections in Zurich and Basel. The organization is a member society of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAGW).

The society's core offerings are three integrated products. The EKWS-Archiv is a digital multimedia archive containing over 114,346 objects — photographs, films, audio recordings, and written materials documenting Swiss everyday and popular culture from the late 19th century to the present — hosted on the DaSCH (Digital Humanities Swiss) infrastructure and accessible via IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) viewers under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 license. The peer-reviewed journal Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde (SAVk), published continuously since 1897 and distributed globally through ETH Zurich's e-periodica.ch platform, is being renamed Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft (SZEKW) and transitioning to fee-free Open Access digital publication in 2026. The online magazine 'das bulletin' provides themed editorial coverage of everyday and popular culture.

The business model combines annual membership dues (open to students, alumni, affiliated individuals, and related organizations, with a 50% discount on archive usage for members), unit-priced archive licensing (CHF 25–80 per image and CHF 50–80 per film-minute depending on use category and duration), a CHF 40 base administrative fee per order, and likely institutional funding via SAGW and public-sector grants. Revenue is not publicly disclosed. Distribution occurs through the EKWS website, e-periodica.ch, DaSCH IIIF infrastructure, MailChimp newsletters, and in-person events and conferences. The organization employs approximately 7 staff and is led by President Gisela Unterweger.

Name

Empirische Kulturwissenschaft Schweiz EKWS

Legal name

Empirische Kulturwissenschaft Schweiz (EKWS)

Website

https://ekws.ch

Company type

Private

Founded year

1896

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Empirische Kulturwissenschaft Schweiz EKWS is a Basel-based non-profit scholarly society founded in 1896 that serves Swiss researchers, students, museums, and cultural professionals through a 114,346-object digital multimedia archive, a peer-reviewed journal, and an online culture magazine.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Academic Scholarly Society and Cultural Heritage Archive

NAICS

Periodical Publishers (513120), Web Search Portals, Libraries, Archives, and Other Information Services (5192), Libraries and Archives (51921)

SIC

Periodicals: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2721), Books: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2731), Miscellaneous Publishing (2741), Services-Membership Organizations (8600)

akta.pro primary industry

Content Governance, Compliance, Retention & eDiscovery (HDAEAGAJ)

akta.pro secondary industries

Web Content Management (WCM) & Experience Platforms (Content Services) (HDAEAGAK), Health, Safety & Environmental (HSE/EHS) Publishing (MPAJACAF)

Keywords

• Scholarly society services
• Cultural heritage archive
• Academic journal publishing
• Digital humanities platform
• Cultural anthropology research

Headquarters

HQ city

Basel

HQ country

Switzerland

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales

Pricing tiers

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

EKWS is a scholarly society that maintains a digital multimedia archive (EKWS-Archiv) containing over 114,346 photographs, films, audio recordings, and written documents on Swiss everyday and popular culture, accessible globally via IIIF viewers through the DaSCH infrastructure. It also publishes the peer-reviewed scientific journal SAVk/SZEKW and the online magazine 'das bulletin', and operates a membership-based professional network for empirical cultural science researchers, students, museums, and cultural institutions in Switzerland.

Product overview

EKWS operates as a scholarly society for Empirical Cultural Science in Switzerland, founded in 1896. The organization provides a unified platform comprising three core offerings: a digital multimedia archive (EKWS-Archiv) containing over 114,000 photographic, film, audio, and written objects organized into named collections; the online magazine 'das bulletin' featuring themed content on everyday and popular culture; and the Swiss Archive for Folklore (SAVk), a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The archive is accessible via IIIF viewers and Creative Commons licensing (CC BY-NC 4.0), supporting academic research and cultural documentation.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• SAVk (Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde): Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde - the scientific journal published by EKWS, publishing original works on everyday cultural, cultural-anthropological, regional-ethnographic and cultural science topics. From 2026, it will be renamed to 'Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft (SZEKW) / Revue suisse d'anthropologie culturelle (RSAC) / Swiss Journal for Cultural Anthropology (SJCA)'.
• das bulletin
• EKWS-Archiv

Products and services

• EKWS-Archiv (Digital Multimedia Archive) A multimedial digital archive containing over 114,346 objects including photographs, films, audio recordings, and written materials documenting Swiss everyday and popular culture from the late 19th century to the present. Materials are accessible globally via IIIF viewers and searchable by format, collection, creator, concept, and date. Archive content is licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 and available to academic researchers, museums, cultural institutions, students, and the general public for licensing under Category A (commercial/exhibition) and Category B (academic/educational) pricing.
• das bulletin (Online Magazine)

Quantifiable outcome

• The Swiss Journal for Cultural Anthropology (SAVk) has been published continuously since 1897, with all issues since then searchable online at e-periodica.ch

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration4 records

Feature1 record

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAGW / ASSM)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerEKWS is a member society of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAGW), one of Switzerland's four national academies. This affiliation provides institutional legitimacy, networking opportunities, and support for the society's mission to advance empirical cultural science in Switzerland. The 'Stimmen zur EKWS' initiative is explicitly supported by SAGW.
• DaSCH (Digital Humanities Swiss)coreTechnology or IntegrationThe EKWS archive is hosted on the DaSCH (Digital Humanities Swiss) infrastructure, which provides IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) viewer functionality for accessing digitized archive materials. This enables standardized, interoperable access to the archive's multimedia collections.
• e-periodica.ch (ETH Zurich)coreChannel Partner/ Reseller/ DistributorAll issues of the Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde (SAVk) since 1897 are made fully searchable through e-periodica.ch, a digital research library platform operated by ETH Zurich, enabling global scholarly access to the journal's complete archive.

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Europeana Foundation: EU-wide digital cultural-heritage platform aggregating European archives; competes for researcher attention and, via IIIF, is interoperable with EKWS's archive — a broader incumbent in the same digital-humanities space.
• Schweizerische Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften (SAGW): Parent-style umbrella academy of which EKWS is a member; comparable in coordinating Swiss humanities societies, providing funding access, and acting as institutional legitimacy anchor.
• Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Volkskunde (historical / SAGW member societies): EKWS is itself a SAGW member society; the broader SAGW umbrella and other member societies (e.g., history, folklore, linguistics) operate comparable journal+archive+events models and compete for the same Swiss academic humanities audience.

Direct peers

• Schweizerisches Nationalmuseum: Switzerland's national museum network, operating major cultural-heritage collections across the country with overlapping audiences in Swiss everyday and popular culture and parallel use of digital archives — directly comparable in mission and content scope to EKWS.
• Schweizerisches Sozialarchiv: Swiss Social Archives in Zurich, an independent foundation preserving Swiss social history with a publicly accessible digital archive — a close operational and thematic peer for EKWS's archival mission.
• e-periodica (ETH Zurich): ETH Zurich's digital library platform that already hosts EKWS's complete SAVk journal archive back to 1897; a direct channel partner and a structural comparator for Swiss academic periodical hosting.
• Museum der Kulturen Basel: Basel-based ethnographic and cultural-anthropology museum that EKWS explicitly lists as a partner; shares audiences and overlapping collections of Swiss and global popular culture.
• Phonothèque nationale suisse: Swiss national sound archive preserving Swiss audio heritage — closely comparable multimedia archival mission and academic/research audience as EKWS's audio holdings.

Emerging players

• Wikimedia CH: Swiss chapter of Wikimedia Foundation, an adjacent digital-heritage and Open Knowledge actor that overlaps with EKWS in cultural-content dissemination, Open Access, and CC-licensed reuse — enabling thematic partnership or partial competitive overlap.

Regional players

• Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek: Germany's national digital library portal aggregating cultural and academic collections; comparable digital-archive infrastructure and audiences, though focused on German rather than Swiss cultural heritage.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/empirische-kulturwissenschaft-schweiz

Compliance2 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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