Katharina Michaelowa is Professor of Political Economy and Development at the University of Zurich and at the Center for Comparative and International Studies (CIS), ETH and University of Zurich. Her research on policies and politics of developing countries, international development cooperation, and international climate policy led to over 100 publications including several books, and articles in journals such as International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, the Review of International Organizations, the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Public Choice, World Development, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Climate Policy and Climatic Change. In addition, until December 2020, she was a member of the Presiding Board of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) where she was responsible for the area of international research cooperation. Since August 2021, she has been Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
After her studies of Economics at the universities of Mannheim and Hamburg as well as at Delhi School of Economics, she initially held positions at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics and at the OECD. She has always been very interested in interdisciplinary cooperation, which led her to co-found initiatives such as the annual international conference on the Political Economy of International Organizations (PEIO) and the Zurich based Network for Interdisciplinary Climate Research.