I grew up in a village in Black Forest, about an hour away from the French and Swiss border. In my childhood, traveling through Europe and skiing in the Alps was normal. I used to take trains from Frankfurt / Main to West Berlin, as well as to the South of Spain. I witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall, as well as border check points fall in Europe, which meant crossing the river Rhine into Alsace without border controls.

By the mid 1990s I lived in Paris, and in 1997 made it across the Atlantic, interning at a Washington DC based NGO. Driven by the question, how it had come to World War II, I wanted explore the field of conflict resolution.

By the mid-1990s I lived in Berlin, starting to work on my doctorate / PhD in international relations. A research scholarship brought me back to Washington DC in April 1999. It was followed by a post-doc fellowship with American Institute for Contemporary German Studies.

In September 2001, my center of life shifted from Washington DC to New York City. I was scheduled to start as a guest scholar with the Center for European Studies of New York University on September 15, 2001. I had spent the summer of 2001 in Black Forest. My flight back to JFK, New York on September 12, 2001 was canceled. I landed at JFK, flying through Madrid, on September 17, 2001. New York and America had changed for ever.

I would stay in New York and a year later, in 2002 started to teach international affairs, conflict prevention and European Studies with the School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University, as well as at the Center for Global Affairs of New York University.

mhpaewriter@gmail.com