The earliest version of the database focused on Europeans who had been awarded fellowships in the social sciences and were listed in the Rockefeller Foundation Directory of Fellowships and Scholarships (1972). Data about these fellows was captured between 2011 and 2014 by a team consisting of :
- Frédéric Attal
- Justine Faure
- Morgane Labbé
- Isabella Löhr
- Marie Scot
- Judith Syga
- Ludovic Tournès
- Michael Werner
In 2014, Ludovic Tournès joined forces with a group of Swiss historians and together they imagined a more extensive project. The aim was to record the trajectories of every person who had received an individual award from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, and the International Education Board. This Swiss core consisted of:
The group was located at the Université de Lausanne, the Université de Genève, and the Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement de Genève. Their first step was to extract data from the Rockefeller Foundation Directory of Fellowships and Scholarships (1972), which was published by the Rockefeller Foundation. They received support from the College of Humanities at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, assistance from Fréderic Kaplan and Sabine Süsstrunk, contribution from Arthur Descoeudres, and an extraction script was created and implemented by Alexandru Ardelean under the supervision of Andrea Mazzei.
In 2017, the Swiss group applied for funding from the Fonds National Suisse for a project titled “Rockefeller fellows as heralds of globalization: the circulation of elites, knowledge, and practices of modernization (1920s-1970s)”. They also enlisted the collaboration of the Rockefeller Archive Center (Tarrytown, New York). The Center provided scanned copies of “fellowship recorder cards”, 5×7 inches cards which compile information on individuals who received awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, the International Education Board, and the General Education Board.
These cards contained more information than the Directory and included many individuals who were not listed in it. As a result, the cards became the dominant source of information for the database, with more information available in the Data Documentation section of the website and the forthcoming “5×7 inches” essay in the Research Reports section.
The logistics and know-how for the construction of the database was provided by the Observatoire des Élites Suisses at the University of Lausanne (OBELIS). At every stage, it was a group of people who worked together to design the data model, manage its operating platform, populate the database, and consolidate it through cleaning and standardizing operations. In addition to the aforementioned quartet, the following team contributed with ideas, energy, humor during long hours spent extracting or revising data from the fellowship recorder cards :
- Ahmad Fahoum
- Diana Alejandra Méndez Rojas
- Caroline Montebello
- Steven Piguet (our much solicited data curator)
- Pierre-Yves Saunier
- Mathilde Sigalas
- Anton Tarradellas
- Joshua Thew
- Hannah Tyler
Among many working sessions and teleconferences over the course of several years, a special mention should be made of a 1 week group visit to the Rockefeller Archive center in June 2019, where we enjoyed the pleasures of intensive collective research (sorry Ludovic, this is not one of your most spectacular shirts).

The resulting dataset contains information on 14,650 awards and 13,633 recipients whose trajectories span dozens of countries and territories, as well as thousands of institutions. You can explore the database in the Discover section.
Initially, the database was created using a proprietary format. However, once it was completed at the end of 2022, the team sought a new environment that would allow collaborative research and public access. We specifically wanted an open-source system that could easily import and export data in different formats. This led us to choose Heurist, which was created by Ian Johnson at the University of Sydney to store, analyze, and publish a variety of humanities data. Heurist now hosts thousands of databases, please do check out some of their featured projects. Let us add that Heurist provide its services without fees for a range of users that include PhD students, solo researchers or large research teams.
To transfer the database to Heurist, we conducted a series of brainstorming and hands-on workshops at the Laboratoire Triangle (CNRS, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon). This was also the place where we designed, tested and improved the tools of the “Discover the database” section. Active contribution was made by :
- Carole Boulai
- Séverine Gedzelman
- Pierre-Yves Saunier
- Vincent Ventresque (our mastermind in this undertaking)
During and after the transfer process, we received prompt support from Ian Johnson and his team, as well as from the Heurist community of users. There are list-servs available in different languages, and subscriptions to the French-language list can be found here: https://groupes.renater.fr/sympa/info/heurist-utilisateurs. Please note that the exploratory paths provided in the Discover the database section are using a very small fraction of Heurist possibilities.