In the present interview she talks about her recently obtained MSCA fellowship, her decision to move to Köbenhavn, Denmark, to work as a researcher, and also about her RETROCHILD project, which will focus on the relationships among children, trauma, political violence, and resilience after WWII in the border area between Slovenia and Italy.
Dr. Cergol Paradiž’s research work will take her to Scandinavia for the first time, where her supervisor will be Prof. Dr. Ana Antić from the Centre for Culture and the Mind at the University of Copenhagen. There she will complete the theoretical part of the project work, while she is planning several visits to Slovenia to research archival material.
Although she has never been much of a traveller, several reasons motivated her to go abroad: “I just realised I can’t survive without this experience, without the experience to go somewhere, to enrol in a different environment, to be better in my skills…” Equally important was her desire to network with other scientists, in particular with renowned scholars who engage in historical trauma studies in Copenhagen.
There were also some practical reasons, connected with her family. As Dr. Cergol Paradiž puts it: “Paradoxically, during COVID we realised that we could do many things from home – even my husband could work from home. And then we realised that I could go and achieve my dreams.”
She recalls her childhood as a happy one: “I was an only child, I was the centre of the universe, my parents and grandparents loved me a lot. My father was enthusiastic about history, and my grandparents also told me a lot about how they survived WWII. Maybe this is one of the reasons, why I am love history so much.”
However, despite the joy her work brings her, the topic of her project is rather sad. One of its most innovative aspects is that it will not start from the issue trauma, such as the bombing and child abuse that occurred during the war, but from the events that followed. Dr. Cergol Paradiž explains: “I will start the research from the subsequent interventions – medical interventions, social interventions and legal interventions.” She will also investigate how children were cared for after the war, juvenile delinquency and similar issues.
Dr. Cergol Paradiž also points out the significance of her research for current events: “It is very important to study the correlation between political abuse and abuse in general, and how these are related children and trauma, from as many different angles as possible. Those days were terrible in this respect. I think also the historical perspective that I can offer, which can see the topic from another angle, can contribute to understanding some of the problems that we are now seeing today.”
Srečno! Good Luck! Held og lykke!