Nicolas Hafner

Nicolas Hafner is a postdoctoral researcher at the World Trade Institute, where he works together with Kirthana Ganeson on the SNSF-funded project “In Search of a Geneva Consensus: The Trade-Development Nexus in the GATT/WTO and UNCTAD,” led by Prof. Manfred Elsig. The project seeks to understand how ideas about trade and development have changed over time in the three Geneva-based international organisations, combining text-as-data methods with historical analysis. He is also a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Digital Humanities and Multilateralism at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Nicolas’ research interests include the history of decolonisation and development, Third World internationalism, the history of international economic institutions and investment law, the history of ideas and of the social sciences, and oral history.

Nicolas holds a Bachelor of Arts in History, Public Law and Political Science from the University of Zurich, and a Master’s degree in International History and Politics from the Geneva Graduate Institute. He completed his PhD at the Geneva Graduate Institute in 2026, with funding from a Swiss National Science Foundation Doc.CH grant

Together with Atwa Jaber and Devarya Srivastava, he co-organises the SNSF-supported workshop series “Decolonization Now: Histories, Politics, Possibilities” at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Before turning to academia, Nicolas worked as a consultant and communications specialist. He held positions at Farner Consulting, served as interim Executive Secretary of the Swiss Malaria Group, worked in public relations for the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme in Indonesia, and wrote as a freelance journalist. He speaks German, English, and French fluently and some Persian and Spanish.