Looking closely, staying calm. That’s not a talent. It’s a craft.

Aline Müller-Dagan, born in 1986, studied social anthropology: the science of looking closely. Not how people should live. But how they really live.

Then came the world. For three years she lived and worked in a peace project between Israelis and Palestinians. Since 2015 she has been deepening her practice of Nonviolent Communication, not as a technique but as a way of being. Over the years she has helped carry mediations and support processes in regions of tension in Africa and the Middle East. In places where listening is not a method but a necessity.

Whoever can stay calm there stays calm at 6.30 pm in a Basel kitchen, too.

Later she taught at an open school, a place where children learn not through instructions but through relationship. There, what runs through all her stations was confirmed: children show very precisely what they need. You only have to be able to look.

Today Aline lives in Freiburg and has two children. Her work takes her where families need her: above all to Basel. Perhaps the best answer to why she does this work is the simplest one: she prefers to spend her time where children are.