Géraldine Merz works as a research assistant in child protection for the global network ECPAT (End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography & Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes). She is the laureate of the 2014 Arditi Prize in International Relations, awarded for her Master’s dissertation «Memoria Histórica in El Salvador and Beyond: The Exploration of a Dynamic Memoryscape». She tells us the personal story behind her research.

My interest in questions of state violence, migration and development has evolved over the years. When I was 16, I saw the movie “Voces Inocentes“, about a child soldier from El Salvador whose life is saved when he escapes to the US. I found the theme so shocking and startling that I dedicated my high school Matura paper to the topic.
During my bachelor’s degree in contemporary history at the Université de Fribourg, I worked with asylum seekers at the Federal Office of Migration and did an internship on the rights of indigenous peoples. When I heard that a new course on “Anthropology and Sociology of Development” had opened at the Graduate Institute in 2011, it seemed the perfect opportunity to equip myself with the tools to engage more deeply with these debates.

At the Institute, I was trained to understand and analyze the theme of state violence and memory on a whole new level. When I got the opportunity to do an exchange semester at George Washington University in Washington, DC, a hub for exiled Salvadorans, I knew I wanted to work with members of the diaspora. I was interested in how memories travel across borders and how memory survives in exile. Once I had my network within the diaspora, I wanted not just to limit my research to them, but to conduct fieldwork in El Salvador itself, where upcoming presidential elections were making the role of memory and national history, and thus the political divide, even more apparent. It was also a great opportunity to accompany the interlocutors from DC and experience their political activism in San Salvador itself. Anthropology equipped me with the right tools to embed historical, political and psychological aspects, yet never losing the most important part of my research: the human being.

My time in San Salvador was rough. It was insightful to live with a former political prisoner, but it was also challenging. Not only did it make me question my role as a young anthropologist churning up painful memories and thus wrestling with questions of guilt and entitlement, but it also showed me the limits of my own capacities: I came home drained after emotionally difficult interviews, unable to listen to or comfort my room-mate, giving in to my body’s mental protection shield and retreating to my room to read a novel instead, which I perceived not only as a disappointment to my roommate, but also to myself.

The emotional heaviness of the topic and my close relation to my contacts made the second part, writing, extremely difficult. When I came back from the field I found myself completely lost in these personal entanglements. I could not see myself writing an objective, academic piece about what I had experienced in El Salvador – it was too close to me, too imprinted on myself. Eventually, however, I understood that writing the dissertation could actually be a way to process these experiences. And so the dissertation became a very personal piece of work, a way to express not only my findings, but also my doubts and self-reflections.