Sarah Fichtner grew up on what she perceived as an artificial island called West Berlin. She is a social anthropologist and education researcher, interested in the process of ‘doing school’ and what it takes to shape the school of the future, whether in Germany or Sub-Saharan Africa, where she spent quite some time. She has also been working on childhoods in the context of flight and migration. As the project coordinator of the activist ‘encounter’ network and inspired by her Mnemo ZIN colleagues, Sarah Fichtner became interested in collective and artistic biography and memory work as a means for transcultural learning.