Michael Jakob is Professor in History and Theory of Landscape at hepia (Geneva) and Professor of Comparative Literature (Chair) at Grenoble University. He is a Visiting Professor at BIARCH, Barcelona and has taught in the past at several Swiss, Italian, French, American and Spanish universities. His teaching and research focus on landscape theory, aesthetics, the history of vertigo, contemporary theories of perception and the poetics of architecture. He is the founder and head of COMPAR(A)ISON, an International Journal of Comparative Literature, the chief editor of «di monte in monte», a series of books on mountain culture (Edizioni Tarara’, Verbania), and the head of the Paysages books series with Infolio, the major publishing house of architectural books in Switzerland. He produced several documentary films for TV (on and with Frank Gehry, Linus Pauling, Bruno Bettelheim, etc.) and has a longstanding experience as a radio journalist. He has published recently: Le Paysage, Infolio, Gollion 2008 (in Italian: Il paesaggio, Il Mulino, Bologna 2009 ); Il giardino allo specchio. Percorsi tra pittura, cinema e fotografia, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2009 (in French: Le jardin et les arts, Infolio, Gollion 2009; in Spanish: El jardín y la representación, Siruela, Madrid 2010); 100 Paysages, Infolio, Gollion 2011. Jakob received his MA and PhD from Geneva University and his Habilitation (venia legendi) from Bern University.
