Heaven is a library ? An interdisciplinary discussion with Petina Gappah - 17 November 2026
Critically acclaimed author and lawyer Petina Gappah joins us to read and reflect on her forthcoming memoir based on her experience and observations made among other during her time in Geneva. Drawing on this work and her previous texts, she will discuss with us the imbrications of legal thinking and literature writing, the consideration for in-justice in both and which possibilities are offered in a changing world.
Petina Gappah is a writer and lawyer who was born in Zambia and raised in Zimbabwe. She studied law at the University of Zimbabwe and at Cambridge, and completed her doctorate at the University of Graz. An international lawyer specializing in the World Trade Organization, most recently, she worked for the ACWL, an organization in Geneva that advances the interests of more than seventy developing countries in the multilateral trading system. She is currently the 25. «Friedrich Dürrenmatt Gastprofessorin für Weltliteratur» at the University of Bern.
