Lola Wilhelm is a fourth year PhD candidate at the Graduate Institute researching 'a transnational food company's involvement in public health, agriculture, and humanitarian aid in Europe and West Africa.'

What is your research concerned with?
My PhD thesis examines the historical role played by the food and agribusiness industry in the development of knowledge and practices in the fields of public health, agricultural modernisation, and humanitarian relief, over a period where this role has been hardly documented - roughly from the 1920s to the 1960s. To make this a feasible project, I opted to use one food company, Nestlé, as my main vantage point into this complex history. I look at the relationships that Nestlé built over decades with a range of players - international organisations and charities, networks of scientists and medical professionals - who were concerned with these issues. I have tried to identify and analyse some of the most significant steps of this historical process by using case-studies in Switzerland and other European countries, as well as in countries under French colonial rule in West Africa.

How have you been going about it?
My main entry point has been the archives of the Nestlé company, located in Vevey, Switzerland. Working in the archives of a transnational company was a new experience for me, and it raised various methodological questions. The company records reflect the complex and often-changing structure of the firm, which sometimes makes them difficult to navigate. I also found that the need to triangulate information and identify and fill the gaps in these archives was particularly acute, something I keep in mind when working in the other archival collections I use, such as those of the International Committee of the Red Cross, French colonial records, and press archives. There is still little historical scholarship on the involvement of transnational firms in public international affairs, arguably because access to their archives remains restricted in many cases; so I hope my thesis will contribute to the discussion on how to mobilise such archives and address their possible silences.

What led you to focus on this particular set of issues?
My research interests when I started the PhD lay in the topics of hunger and food security in an international perspective, the history of international organisations, and of humanitarian aid. I had previously done some consultancy work on the history of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, and this had sparked my interest for some of these topics. The idea of working more specifically on the food industry came from travelling to various West and Central African countries for a previous job. Back then, I had been intrigued by the ubiquity of some products, Nescafé and Maggi cubes for instance, in the culinary cultures of the region. I became curious about the historical influence of the food industry over diets and eating habits both in Europe and in regions once under its colonial control, and its role in the co-definition of nutritional progress and modernity. The thesis topic finally took shape once I secured access to the Nestlé archives, following my MPT [Mémoire préliminaire de thèse] and discussions with my supervisor and second reader, Prof. Rodogno and Ribi-Forclaz.