Analysen, Kommentare, Research
Britta Petersen
New Delhi, India
Britta Petersen currently works as an advisor to the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Bonn.
Prior to that she was Senior Fellow and Head of Outreach and Development at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a thinktank based in New Delhi, India.
From 2010 to 2014 she served as a Country Director of the Heinrich Boell Stiftung in Pakistan, a political foundation affiliated with the German Green party. Cooperating with partners in Pakistan on topics such as climate change, nuclear issues, women’s rights, Sufi culture and alternative media, she lived for two years in Lahore and shifted to Islamabad with her newborn son in 2012.
She lived in Kabul, Afghanistan from 2003 to 2006 from where she wrote for the German FT and founded the Initiative Free Press (IFP), an NGO that specialises in the training of journalists in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan. During this time, she also served as media advisor to the Afghan Minister for Women’s Affairs, Dr. Massouda Jalal as part of the gender mainstreaming programme of the German Development Cooperation (GIZ).
She moved to New Delhi in 2006 from where she continued to report about India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
After completing her Masters degree in Philosophy, Political Science and Economics at Free University Berlin in 1994, Ms.Petersen trained as a journalist at Axel Springer Journalism School in Berlin and became an editor for business and economics in the same company. Upon the inception of the German Financial Times, she joined their team in 2000 as editor for politics in South- and Southeast Asia in Berlin and later became their correspondent for South Asia.
Britta's articles have been published not only in the German Financial Times but in many major German newspapers and magazines such as Die Zeit, Die Welt, tageszeitung, CICERO, Internationale Politik, Asia Pacific Times, Express Tribune (Karachi) and The Hindu (Chennai).
She also published three books in German language on South Asia: “Mission at the Hindukush. Soldiers of he German Federal Army in Afghanistan” (2005), “Where the Gods live. Religion and Politics in India” (2006) and (together with photographer Johann Scheibner) the coffee table book “Highlights India. The 50 places you must have seen” (2008).
