Dr. Paola De Martin Collective research as survival. Architecture, migration and the transformation of historical trauma in Switzerland

How can you research a space in which you have been defined as an impossible subject from the day you were born? How can knowledge be produced about social structures when one’s own parents and ancestors were systematically excluded from the very spaces they helped create and sustain? Drawing on these questions, this lunch gathering engages with the historical trauma produced by Swiss migration laws and their enduring effects across generations. Speaking from the position of a scholar-activist, Paola de Martin explores how seemingly personal forms of knowledge production can become powerful tools of scholarly inquiry, public enlightenment, and collective survival. The lunch talk highlights how lived experience can illuminate broader structures of power and exclusion, opening new perspectiv