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.

To this she added a training in family constellation work, with certification. It shifted her view once more: away from the single child, towards the whole fabric. Who sits where. Who carries what, without knowing it. Much of what looks like one person’s problem in a family is a movement of the whole. Formally, Aline is also a certified systemic family counsellor. It’s a decent title, but it doesn’t describe where her work comes from.

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.