Katharina’s research is concerned with socioecological transformations towards socially just and ecologically sustainable societies. Her approach to environmental politics combines decolonial theories with postgrowth approaches to social justice and environmental sustainability. Her research interests are broadly organised along three interrelated themes:

1. Degrowth

Degrowth is an interdisciplinary field of study and growing social movement whose proponents suggest reorienting the economy towards social equality and wellbeing, environmental sustainability and democratic decision making. Degrowth envisions a society in which wellbeing does not depend on economic growth and the environmental and social consequences of its pursuit. Instead, it proposes an equitable, voluntary reduction of overconsumption in affluent economies and rerouting energy and material flows away from socio-ecologically harmful productivism towards care, cooperation and autonomy.

Katharina’s doctoral work explored the cultural politics of degrowth and intervened in limits to growth debates by examining degrowth from a decolonial perspective. Her research thereby contributes to on-going debates around decolonising degrowth. The research was supported by funding from the Royal Economic Society, the British Federation of Women Graduates and the Society for Latin American Studies, amongst others. Katharina has been an organising team member of Degrowth Talks, a free webinar series on YouTube which makes degrowth knowledge accessible to the general public.

      2. Alternatives to Development with regional expertise in Latin America

The development focus of her work pays attention to how indigenous and environmental social movements and communities create alternatives to the hegemonic, universalised Western model of growth-based, extractive and neoliberal development. Her regional expertise is in Latin America; specifically Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia and she has paid special attention to Buen Vivir, a pan-Latin American, indigenous and grassroots conceptualisation of Good Living.

Katharina’s research thereby gives analytical weight to struggles for political and socio-economic organisation that centre socio-ecological wellbeing, but which have been marginalised from (academic) knowledge production. To this end, her doctoral research presented an empirical study into Buen Vivir/sumak kawsay in practice in Ecuador. By creating inter-epistemic dialogue between degrowth and Buen Vivir, her work democratises inter-epistemic dialogues in order to strengthen alternatives to productivism and harmful growth from the Global North and South, while overcoming their respective weak points. The PhD’s qualitative study of Buen Vivir in Ecuador furthermore addressed a lack of available empirical data in the literature on alternatives to development in Latin America.

      3. Decolonising Decarbonisation

Katharina is furthermore interested in exploring the environmental justice aspects of the Global North’s decarbonisation strategies and climate mitigation and adaptation projects, which are often offered as development projects to the Global South, for instance in the case of REDDD+, the UNFCCC mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. These raise important questions of land use, indigenous rights, knowledge production, sovereignty, resource access, and benefit capture, amongst others.

Most recently, her work is concerned with Green Extractivism, that is, the extraction of critical raw materials and clean energy for low-carbon transitions. These minerals are predominantly extracted from water scarce, biodiverse and/or indigenous territories in the Global South but also European peripheries. Katharina is currently looking into the socio-political conflicts and territorial reconfigurations arising from green extractivism in the Colombian Amazon.

From 2022 to 2023, Katharina was Project Co-Lead for the Fight Against Institutional Racism Network (FAIR) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). She co-led a qualitative piece of research that formed the basis for a public charter and internal accountability mechanism for members and partners of the LSHTM Health in Humanitarian Crisis Centre. The Charter and Implementation Guidance set out a set of best practices for decolonising humanitarian research, teaching and other practices at the Centre.

Katharina currently chairs the Development Geographies Research Group in the Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers).

She also co-leads the ALSS Faculty Research Group 'Environment and Society' together with Dr Dietzel.