Katrin Kinzelbach is a Thyssen Fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin, where she works in the Rising Powers and Global Governance program. She is currently researching China’s influence on the international human rights regime.

Prior to joining GPPi, Katrin worked at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights from 2007-2010. She also taught with Manfred Nowak at the University of Vienna and served as a thesis supervisor for the European master’s program on human rights and democratization. In addition, she was a Global Governance 2020 Fellow.

Before she returned to academia in the fall 2007, Katrin was a project manager at the UNDP Regional Centre in Bratislava, working on democratic governance and security sector reform. She also served as a program specialist at the UNDP’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery in New York, and from 2001–2002 she was assigned to the UNDP’s Afghanistan Task Force. Before the UNDP, Katrin worked on a short-term assignment for the UNHCR in 2000 and as an OSCE election observer in 1998 and 1999.

For her PhD on the EU’s human rights dialogue with China, defended at the University of Vienna in 2010, Katrin won the award Deutscher Studienpreis of the Körber Foundation, which honors outstanding PhD research with particular value to society at large (first prize in the social sciences, 2011).

Katrin further holds an MA in international peace and security from King’s College in London and a Magister/Laurea dual degree jointly awarded by the Universities of Florence and Bonn. She has received scholarships from the German National Academic Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Haniel Foundation and the Volkswagen Foundation. She is currently the recipient of a research grant from the Fritz-Thyssen-Foundation.

Languages: German, English, Italian, French, Chinese