Kathrin Pollow

Historian, historical consultant for the film & arts industry, trainer for cultural and intercultural awareness, communication and competence.

Independent coach and lecturer of intercultural communication and competence since 2014. Trainings in: German, English and Portuguese. Clients: national and international groups at universities, colleges, NGO’s, and companies. Regional focus and trainings for the US, the Caribbean, Brazil and South-Africa.

An integral feature of Kathrin’s training sessions is the analysis of current (media) events with regard to colonial legacies and cultural, political, historical, racial, social, sexual, gender, and class-based biases. This includes a sensitization for (unconscious) racism, national and racial privileges and the study of critical whiteness. Her varied biography provides Kathrin with a fine sense for imbalances in power structures and a vast amount of case stories. Kathrin’s teachings are characterized by a constant revision of material with regard to focus group and she combines, mixes and questions euro-centric methods and frameworks with insights from scholars of the Global South.

Short Bio: After 4 years of medicine, with internships in Nicaragua and Brazil, Kathrin switched to the study of history and Portuguese. Main focus: African diaspora and Black Power movements in the US, and South America. In 1998 Kathrin earned a scholarship of Temple University in Philadelphia, where she subsequently finished her studies with a M.A. Teaching posts at a language school for Brazilian immigrants and at an inner-city high-school followed.

Parallel to her studies Kathrin worked as an artist support and receptionist at dance- and film-festivals, music- and art-centers, and as a translator for English and Portuguese. After a 5-year stay in New York, with various internships at NGO’s such as Amnesty International and a career in the hospitality industry, Kathrin returned to Hamburg in 2006, where she specialized on translations and historical consultations on various topics and eras for the art community, television, and film (Fatih Akin a.o.).

Throughout varied projects Kathrin has lived and worked with multi-national teams in Germany, the Middle East, Nicaragua, Brazil, Cuba, the US, and South Africa and currently commutes between Hamburg, Bremen and London.