Caroline Y. Robertson-von Trotha

Caroline Y. Robertson-von Trotha (born 22 February 1951 in Glasgow, Scotland) is a Scottish sociologist and cultural scientist, working in Germany.

With the support of a grant from the Peter Fuld Foundation, she received her PhD in 1990 after completing a dissertation on the topic 'Ethnic Identity and Political Mobilisation'.

She was the first to introduce the term in German speaking space, as well as an advising expert and one of the first signatories of the Charta Öffentliche Kommunikationswissenschaft ('Public Communication Science').

[4] This approach had been inspired by the tradition of the British 'PUS Initiative' ('Public Understanding of Science') and the promotion of the 'Understanding of Scientific literacy' developed in North America.

Subsequently, Robertson-von Trotha developed her concept in relation to the PUSH-Memorandum of the non-profit company Wissenschaft im Dialog (WiD), founded in 1999, an initiative of the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft ('Donors' Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanities in Germany'), and in 2012 she carried out the first of several analyses of Public Science "in the mirror of Web 2.0 culture".

At first it is the German sociologist and political scientist Alf Mintzel, for example, who recognizes Robertson-von Trotha's work as a contribution to research on ethnic identities as a "central theorem".

[8] Accordingly, in 2011, she was significantly involved as scientific consultant and co-author in drafting the strategy paper 'Alliance for Integration' of the Stuttgart City Council, which was awarded the Cities for Peace Prize by UNESCO in 2004; and in 2016 she introduced in cooperation with the International Scholars & Welcome Office (IScO) at KIT and within the framework of the Philipp Schwartz Initiative, supported by the German Federal Foreign Office and others, the 'World Science Café', where refugees report on their scientific work.

June 2021: Caroline Y. Robertson-von Trotha was set ex-aequo on the short list of two in the final round of the selection process for the next Executive Director of the 42 member state Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures.