Since 2023, Switzerland has been serving as an elected member of the UN Security Council for the first time in history. In October 2024, two months before concluding its mandate, Switzerland will hold the Council's presidency for the second time. Prof. Lucile Maertens and Dr. Sara Hellmüller will discuss what Switzerland has achieved during its one-month presidency and the challenges of this specific role. The discussion will also address the broader implications of Switzerland's membership and the critical roles of elected members in the current context. Prof. Lucile Maertens and Dr. Sara Hellmüller are co-investigators of a project that academically documents Switzerland’s first membership on the UN Security Council from 2023 to 2024 (funded by the Fondation pour l’Université de Lausanne).
 

Lucile Maertens is Associate Professor in Political Science and International Relations at the Geneva Graduate Institute, co-director of the Global Governance Centre and scientific collaborator at the University of Lausanne. Her current research focuses on international organisations, multilateral practices, global environmental governance and issues of temporality and (de)politicisation. She is finalising a three-year SNFS research project on agenda-keeping in times of crisis investigating how UN actors maintained political attention on the environment during the COVID-19 pandemic. She recently co-authored Why International Organizations Hate Politics: Depoliticizing the World (Routledge, 2021) and La dépolitisation du monde (Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 2024), and co-edited International Organizations and Research Methods: An Introduction (University of Michigan Press, 2023).
 

Sara Hellmüller is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) focusing on peace and conflict research. She has over a  decade of experience conducting research in conflict-affected contexts and has spent more than a year in eastern DR Congo. She is  finalising a five-year SNSF project on the impact of changing world politics on UN peace missions. Together with her team, she  established a comprehensive dataset on UN peace mission mandates (see www.peacemissions.info). Her book publications  include Partners for Peace: The Interaction Between Local and International Peacebuilding Actors (Palgrave 2018, German translation in  2023) and UN Mediation in a Multipolar World: The Case of Syria (under contract with Oxford University Press).