'Dyson sphere' is a very broad term encompassing several distinct types of design, including very light ones.
Space elevator is awesome, but there exist much more clever alternative designs that have substantially lower requirements for material strength, as well as geographical positioning - this is also a huge issue with the original space elevator design. It is a beautiful idea, but that doesn't mean we should cling to it and ignore all other proposals :)
Any links to the research? I'd be interested in having a look :)
Y'all know the rules: