Cora Alder

Cora Alder is a Senior Program Officer in the Mediation Support Team at the Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich, where she supports the teams’ research projects and training courses part-time. Prior to re-joining CSS, Cora worked as an international consultant for GIZ in Mauritania, as an Associate Political Affairs Officer in the UN Department for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs’ Office of the Under-Secretary-General and the Central Africa Team, as a Program Officer in the Mediation Support Team at CSS-ETH Zurich (2018 – 2021), and as an Academic Attachée at the Embassy of Switzerland in Belgium.

Cora is a PhD candidate in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her dissertation project researches implicit understandings of the secular in international mediation and the resulting knowledge production around prominent conceptions of religion in conflict transformation. Cora holds a Joint Degree MA in Religion-Economics-Politics from the Universities of Basel, Lucerne, and Zurich, and a BA in Religious Studies from the University of Zurich.