About
Cora Alder is a PhD student in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her dissertation examines the discursive articulations of the secular and inherent aspects of knowledge/power surrounding the international community of mediation support’s conceptualisation of the Taliban in Afghanistan from the early 1990s to today.
Cora acted as Senior Program Officer (2024 – 2025) and Program Officer (2018 – 2021) in the Mediation Support Team at the Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich. She 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, and as an Academic Attachée at the Embassy of Switzerland in Belgium.
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. She is a Fulbright Visiting Student at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame for the 2025/2026 academic year.
Research topic
Secular Peace: Conceptualizations of Religion within the International Community of Mediation Support
Academic supervisors
Mark Hoffman