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 Relations, 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, UK, where she also completed the M.Phil. programme. 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 was a member of the board of a joint doctoral programme Human Rights, Society and Multi-level Governance. She served two terms as a member of the scientific board of the Minority Rights Institute at the European Research EURAC, Bolzano/Bozen. She served three times as a member (in 2020, 2022 and 2024) 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 committees at universities of Cambridge and Trento. She has supervised several theses that have received the Prešeren award for best theses (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), she is the academic co-ordinator for the PhD study programme in International Relations at the Faculty of Social Sciences where she co-ordinated the one-year master programme in International Relations (in English). 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 (Založba FDV), 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 or was 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 Council of Europe, the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities 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 independent 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). On 1 June 2022, her second 4-year term in the Advisory Committee began. At the first plenary session of the Advisory Committee in October 2022, she was elected President of the Advisory Committee for two years (until end of May 2024), and at the first plenary session of the new composition in October 2024, she was elected President of the Advisory Committee for the third time (until end of May 2026). She is 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 several times at UN regional forum on minority issues, organised by the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues. She co-chaired the UN Forum on minority issues in 2023.
She participated in drafting of several soft law instruments of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities and of soft law documents of the Council of Europe, including the most recent thematic commentary on education, adopted by the Advisory Committee in May 2024. 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.