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.
[1][2][3] 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.
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.
Enduring themes in his writing included the balance of risks between violent confrontation and peaceful co-existence in recent South Tyrol history, coupled with related questions involving how people might grow beyond traditional cultural patterns and ethnic hostilities that had been a feature of the region since its involuntary incorporation into Italy during the second decade of the twentieth century.
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.