Helena Rothfuß: Enthusiastic about the interplay between economics, politics and philosophy

Helena Rothfuß grew up with her mother and two siblings in a community of 1,000 southeast of Stuttgart. "It was exactly what you imagine a childhood in the countryside to be like: lots of time outside in nature and lots of self-determined playtime," Helena mentions. "My mother gave me the freedom I needed to find out what I wanted to do and what I was passionate about." Her school career was also free of constraints. After elementary school, she switched to a secondary school. "Because everything came easily before, it was only there that I learned what it means to learn properly," Rothfuß remarks.

She then went on to a business grammar school, where her love of learning and thinking continued unabated. "For me, my time at grammar school was synonymous with a new start with new subjects and new people," Rothfuß emphasizes. The fact that this new start was a complete success is evidenced by the prizes awarded by the school, with which she was honored for the best exam performance in the Abitur and for her achievements in economics and German - two subjects that could hardly be more contrasting. At the same time, she also gained new perspectives outside of school when she joined the Chinese club and took part in a student exchange in Singapore.

After graduating from high school, Helena Rothfuß fulfilled a long-cherished wish and spent an exchange year in China: "I wanted to experience what I thought would be as contrary as possible to what I already knew." During her time at the High School Affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University, she wanted to find out how the Chinese school system works and form her own opinion about it.

She learned from a former teacher that ZU, with its interdisciplinary view of economics, politics and philosophy, could be a good fit for her. Looking back, she explains: "The freedom to adapt the course to individual needs, the subject-specific focus on social sciences and the feeling of being taken seriously were and are key reasons for choosing ZU." But why she ultimately opted for the PAIR Bachelor's degree rather than the CME Bachelor's degree is a question that she cannot rationally explain. "But that's not so important, because ZU offered me good combination options," explains Rothfuß. She is also grateful for a partial scholarship from ZU and a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation. "For me, it's an incredible privilege to receive social support for my studies. I therefore also see it as my duty to be conscientious with the money invested in me by studying consistently," remarks Rothfuß.

This enabled her to concentrate on her studies, find her focus and continuously adapt her studies. She also worked as a student assistant to gain insights into current research. She worked at the Chair of Modern China Studies, the Chair of Comparative Politics and the Consumer, Market and Policy Research Center | CCMP.

Her first year of study was still shaped by the corona pandemic, which catapulted student life from the analog to the digital world. However, Helena Rothfuß was not deterred by this and put her heart and soul into her work as a spokesperson for the German National Academic Foundation for the Friedrichshafen and Ravensburg region and as a (board) member of The Soapbox - Club for Rhetoric and Debating. "I learned that it is essential - whether at university or at work - to present your message in a way that resonates and inspires," says Rothfuß.

After the first compulsory courses, Helena Rothfuß decided to focus on political economy. She further developed this focus through elective courses and two semesters abroad at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Sciences Po in Reims. In Berkeley, she learned more about the structure of the US tax and social system based on concepts of game theory. How a paper has to be written and structured in order for it to appear in a particular journal: she dealt with this in a course actually offered to doctoral students, in which publications on international security policy were analyzed - "and always at eye level with the professor". In Reims, on the other hand, more memorization and less independent thinking was required, but she gained a great deal of specialist knowledge as a result.

In addition to the knowledge that Helena Rothfuß gained during her semester abroad, the conversations on site and everyday life were also formative. "I particularly benefited from gaining insights into different societies in a short space of time," summarizes Rothfuß. Her internships at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation's international office in Lima and at the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Buenos Aires also contributed to this. "It was particularly impressive to look behind the scenes of a foundation and an embassy abroad, but also to experience how politics and business are done in these countries and how people and the media talk and report about scandals there," Rothfuß describes. This made her aware of how different not only social institutions are from country to country, but also people's ideas of what is good or fair. This led to her current research interest, which resulted in the question: What normative demands do societies place on institutions and to what extent do these correspond to empirical reality?