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Marianne Helfer Herrera Erazo

Director of the Federal Service for Combating Racism, Federal Service for Combating Racism (Switzerland)
Website  (external link, opens in new window) 
Instagram  (external link, opens in new window) 

Visiting Toronto Metropolitan Univeristy

Winter 2023

Marianne Helfer is director of the Service for Combating Racism in Switzerland, a federal government body tasked with preventing racism. She is a social anthropologist (University of Berne) and has focused her career on issues of social exclusion and, in particular, combating racism in institutional settings. Among other things, she co-developed the integration and racism prevention policy at the city of Bern. In her current position at the Service for Combating Racism she and her team shape and mainstream federal policy on the prevention of discrimination and racism and the promotion of human rights. 

Research focus while a Fellow with CERC

While visiting CERC Migration, Marianne will focus on further developing the strategy of the Service for Combating Racism into a plan of action with the following main areas of action: monitoring, prevention, protection and strengthening actors of anti-racism. Through the exchange with relevant provincial and municipal services and organizations of the civil society and learning from academic research at CERC, she intends to strengthen an inclusive and research-based approach.

 
Publications and Reports

Struktureller Rassismus. Ein Annäherungsversuch. In: Tangram (external link, opens in new window)  46/22. (Forthcoming Sept. 2022). (In German)

Die Vertreibung aus dem Paradies. Wie wirkt sich rassistisches Verhalten auf das Zusammenleben aus? In: Terra Cognita (external link, opens in new window)  36/2020 (94-96). (In german)