Natascha Cerny Ehtesham

Natascha Cerny Ehtesham joined swisspeace in 2013. She currently works as a Program Officer in the Dealing with the Past program. From 2013 to 2018, she also worked in the Policy & Platform program.

Alongside her work, she currently pursues a MAS in Archive, Library and Information Science at the Universities of Bern and Lausanne. Otherwise, she holds a MA in Legal Studies from the University of Fribourg, a BA in Oriental and African Studies from the Institute of Asian and African Studies of Lomonosov Moscow State University, and a CAS in Civilian Peacebuilding from the University of Basel. During her studies, she also spent a summer at Beijing Culture and Language University as well as a semester at Peking University.

In her capacity, she has been active in strengthening civil society's role in the framework of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and engaging in the institutional development of an international NGO-network called the Civic Solidarity Platform. She is thus very much interested in the role of civil society along the conflict cycle, particularly the links between human rights and peacebuilding work, dealing with the past and conflict prevention, and the potential of networks and information and archive management contributing to sustainable peace.

Due to her language skills (German, English, Russian, French, Chinese, and some Spanish, Persian, and Italian), she also worked as a freelance interpreter in the fields of trade, politics, culture, medicine, and sports. Also, she has interned at RIA-Novosti (Russian News & Information Agency), worked for humanrights.ch, Bern Tourism, and the Museum Cerny Inuit Collection.

Besides the above mentioned, she is also interested in the topics of climate change (particularly in the geographical context of the Arctic) and art and peace.