Petra Roter is a Professor of International Relations at the University of Ljubljana, where she teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on, among others, International Protection of Minorities, International Protection of Human Rights, International Conflict Management and Research Seminar in International Relations. She is a senior research fellow at the Centre of International Relations, Faculty of Social Sciences. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Cambridge. She was a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University (Department of Politics and International Studies) during the Michaelmas term in 2017. Previously, she was a GARNET Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick, Visiting Research Fellow at the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg (Germany) and a DAAD Fellow at the University of Tübingen (Germany). Between 2019 and 2021, she was a Visiting Professor at the University of Padova where she taught a postgraduate course on Human Rights in Practice (on diversity management), MA in Human Rights and Multi-level Governance. She regularly gives lectures on minority rights within the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation in Venice. She is a member of the board of a joint doctoral programme Human Rights, Society and Multi-level Governance. She is a member of the scientific board of the Minority Rights Institute at the European Research EURAC, Bolzano/Bozen. She is a member (since 2020) of award committee for the prestigious Max van der Stoel Award of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. She has served on PhD committes at universities of Cambridge and Trento. She has supervised several theses that have received the Prešeren award (at the University of Ljubljana and at the Faculty of Social Sciences).
She is Slovenia’s national director for the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation (Venice; EMA) and she co-ordinates the master programme in International Relations (in English) at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Sciences (the one-year MA programme - that was carried out for the last time in academic year 2019-2020). She is the recipient of the faculty award for her contribution to internationalisation. She was elected to the European Inter-University Centre's Board (in 2014), and she was a member of the EMA Executive Committee for two terms (until Dec. 2015). She was re-elected to the EMA Academic Curriculum Group in 2019/20. She is a member of the Executive Council of the Central and East European International Studies Association (CEEISA).
She has written and co-edited books on minority protection, integration as applicable to new minorities, human rights protection and on the mapping of the new world order (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, with T. Volgy, Z. Šabič and A. Gerlak). She has authored articles in the Journal of International Relations and Development, the Parliamentary Affairs, the Mediterranean Politics, the International Journal on Minority and Group Rights, the European Yearbook of Minority Issues, the Croatian International Relations Review, the Mediterranean Quarterly and Treatises and Documents. She has contributed book chapters to volumes published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, Palgrave, Brill. She co-ordinated several EU-funded research projects at the Centre of International Relations, University of Ljubljana, and is a member of several editorial boards (European Journal of International Relations, Treatises and Documents, European Yearbook of Minority Issues). She served as a co-editor of the Journal of International Relations and Development (a SSCI-listed journal).
As an independent expert, she has co-operated with the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, the Council of Europe and the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues. She has been elected to the Advisory Committee of the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities as an inpendent expert in respect of Slovenia. During her first term, in November 2014, she was elected as the First Vice President of the Advisory Committee (for a period of two years), and in October 2016, she was elected as the President of the Advisory Committee for the period of two years (2016-2018). The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has elected her to serve on the Advisory Committee in her second (and final ) 4-year term, which began on 1 June 2022. She was a member of the Human Rights Commission in Slovenia and she served as an independent expert in a working group on minority protection in Slovenia. She participated at UN regional forum on minority issues, organised by the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, again in October 2021. She has participated in drafting of several saf law instruments of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and of soft law documents of the Council of Europe. She has contributed her independent expertise regarding national policies (in several states) on diversity management, minority rights and inclusive education, and she has been engaged in communication with a number of governments on varies issues regarding the management of national or ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity through minority rights.
She was a member of the Ad-Hoc Working Group for preparing a Draft Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers on the contribution of plurilingual education to democracy, appointed by the Steering Committee for Education Policy and Practice (CDPPE) on 13 May 2020 (composed of two state representatives and seven experts from Denmark, France, Luxembourg, Ireland, Switzerland, Slovenia and the United Kingdom). The proposed text of the recommendation with guidelines on plurilingual education was adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 2 February 2022 as Recommendation CM/Rec(2022)1 of the Committee of Ministers to member States on the importance of plurilingual and intercultural education for democratic culture, available at https://search.coe.int/cm/Pages/result_details.aspx?ObjectID=0900001680a563ca.