But it is implicated in the history of colonialism, even without colonies, a country with a legacy of xenophobia and racism, an early battleground of populism as far back as the 1960s, and a democracy with an embarrassing history of gender inequality-in short, Switzerland has a lot of history to work through.

And a pandemic has exacerbated existing social and political inequalities both at national and global levels.Īll this applies very much to Switzerland, too, although the country has long flirted with a self-understanding as a “Sonderfall,” a special case. The legacies of colonialism and efforts to decolonize all manners of history have moved to the top of the agenda across social science and humanities disciplines. The concerns of the Black Lives Matter movement that spread rapidly after the George Floyd killing in 2020 have meshed with historical revisionism and a polarized political realm and have gained global political relevance and urgency. Notably issues of Race, Gender, and Equality/Equity have moved to the fore both in academic research and public discourse. Much has changed in the world since then. It has been a decade since the Swiss Studies Network’s inaugural call for papers in 2012. Swiss Studies Network call for papers for the 2022 GSA Conference in Houston, TX.ĭecolonizing Switzerland: 10 years Swiss Studies Network the GSA

Gsa networx conference 2012