Presentation and discussion of the book "Les Suisses de la mer Noire" by Elena Simonato

Elena Simonato will give a book talk on Les Suisses de la mer Noire: histoire d’une diaspora oubliée. The talk offers a concise yet rigorously documented narrative of the Swiss settler communities on the Black Sea coast of the Russian Empire and the agricultural colonies that emerged there in the nineteenth century. Simonato reconstructs the colonies’ trajectories - from initial hesitation and difficult choices to years of struggle and the first successes - and shows how viticulture, quality agriculture and cheesemaking developed as local industries. Drawing on sources collected in her research projects, the book restores a disappearing world.

Elena Simonato is a Senior Researcher in Russian Linguistics at the University of Lausanne, where she explores the connections between language, migration, and cultural identity. Her work sheds light on how communities maintain their mother tongue and home culture across borders, with a special focus on Swiss settlers along the Northern Black Sea coast - from Odessa to Batoumi. Trained in general linguistics, Italian, French, and Russian, Elena studied at the University of Lausanne and at Saint Petersburg before earning her PhD in Russian Linguistics in 2004 at the University of Lausanne. Her early research examined the epistemology of linguistics and later expanded into major SNSF-funded projects on linguistic basis of the Soviet language policy, including the creation of alphabets for previously unwritten languages. Since 2016, she has led several research projects devoted to the history and the languages of Swiss communities in the Russian empire, uncovering stories of Swiss winegrowers near Odessa, Ticinese architects in Saint Petersburg, and even Swiss cheese-makers in Georgia. Through her research, Elena Simonato brings forgotten voices back into the conversation - revealing how language travels, transforms, and preserves memory across generations.