OUR BOARD

After obtaining a Master’s degree in political science from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, she was a member of the Geneva Parliament from 1981 to 1997. In 1997, she was elected to head the Finance Department of the Cantonal Government, which she chaired from 2001 to 2002. In December 2002, she was elected to the Swiss Federal Government as head of Foreign Affairs, a position she held until December 2011. In 2007 and 2011, she was President of the Swiss Confederation. She chaired the Council of Europe in 2010 and the Ministerial Conference of the Francophonie in 2010 and 2011. In May 2012, she was appointed visiting professor at the University of Geneva. She holds an honorary doctorate from the International University of Geneva (IUG), is a member of the Board of the International Crisis Group, Geneva Call, the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development, and the Leadership Council of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), and chairs the Martin Ennals Awards Foundation. She is the author of La Suisse que je souhaite, Die Schweiz, die ich uns wünsche (2014), Justice sociale et liberté politique selon Calvin : clarification et perspectives (2010).

Charles Méla, a former student of the Ecole normale supérieure, agrégé of classical literature and Doctor d’Etat, is an honorary professor at the University of Geneva where he taught from 1981 to 2007. He was Dean of the Faculty of Letters from 1992 to 1999. From 1994 to 2003, he was president of the Martin Bodmer Foundation in Cologny-Geneva, where he had the new museum designed by the architect Mario Botta created, and from 2004 to 2013, director of the Foundation, where he organised 31 exhibitions. He has been President of the Swiss Association of Friends of the Sainte-Catherine Foundation since May 2003, of the European Centre of Culture since 2008 and of the International Menuhin Music Academy since May 2018. Charles Méla is a Knight in the National Order of Merit (1994), in the Order of Academic Palms (2002) and in the National Order of the Legion of Honour (2010). Scientific editor of Chrétien de Troyes’ novels, author of critical works, he published in 1984 La Reine et le Graal, published by Éditions du Seuil in 1984, a work crowned by the Académie française, Légendes des siècles. Parcours d’une collection mythique, published by Éditions du Cercle d’art in 2004, with a preface by Jean Starobinski, Variations sur l’amour et le Graal, published by Éditions Droz in 2012, with a preface by Michel Zink, Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann. Combray in 2013 and Un amour de Swann in 2016 (Premières épreuves corrigées 1913), published by Gallimard (NRF).