Hans Karl Peterlini

Hans Karl Peterlini (born 12 March 1961) is an author, journalist, Austrian university professor and educational researcher originally from South Tyrol (Südtirol/Alto Adige), an autonomous, mostly German speaking province in Northern Italy.

Like over 2/3 of the people living in the province, Hans Karl is a native speaker of German, which has historically been the majority language spoken by the local population. His older brother is a politician Oskar Peterlini.

Biography Born in Bozen/Bolzano, Hans Karl grew up with his family in the South Tyrolean Unterland, just few miles south of Bozen. He attended the Liceo classico in Bozen where he obtained the "Maturità", the Italian high-school diploma.

Peterlini became a journalist in 1982.After first experiences at Dolomiten, the regional daily newspaper, he took a job with ff – Südtiroler Wochenmagazin, a weekly news magazine with broadly liberal views on politics and economics, becoming its editor in chief. In 1982, he was sacked under political pressure following a series of reports of possible political scandals. After that he joined with Hubertus Czernin and the Lentsch family to set up a rival news magazine, Südtirol Profil. After its financial failure, his former magazine called him back as editor-in-chief, resuming his role as editor in chief between 1998 and 2004. The theme of his dissertation was "Homeland/Heimat" as a catch-all for political identity in South Tyrol, summarized in the English open-access article “Heimat-Homeland between life world and defence psychosis: Intercultural learning and unlearning in an ethnocentric culture: long-term study on the identity formation of junior Schützen (shooters)"

He received his habilitation (higher academic qualification) from Innsbruck for a dissertation entitled "Learning and Power: Paradigms of Education and Training in Schools, Culture and Politics" ("Lernen und Macht. Paradigmata der Bildung in Schule, Kultur, Politik") and he received his corresponding teaching certificate. For the 2014/2015 academic year he obtained the teaching chair in "General Education Sciences and Intercultural Education" at Klagenfurt's Alpen-Adria University. In 2020, he established the UNESCO Chair on Global Citizenship Education at the University of Klagenfurt and became its holder. In 2023 brought his research together in the open access book "Learning Diversity", which spans from ethnicised identity designs to global citizenship. His most recent focus is on the potential of transformative learning for a more just and equal world. In the book "The Epicenter: Democracy, Eco*Global Citizenship and Transformative Education", edited by Paul Carr, Gina Thésée, & Eloy Rivas-Sanchez (2023), Peterlini wrote the Chapter "Feeling the World", exploring potentialities and dilemmas for creating a global empathy. For the university course Global Citizenship Education (2019-2023, Peterlini and the course team (Jasmin Donlic, Heidi Grobbauer, Karin Liebhart, Werner Wintersteiner) were awarded the Global Education Award. With Jasmin Donlic he is editing the Yearbook Migration and Society.