Katarzyna Zysk is a professor of international relations and contemporary history at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (IFS), which is part of the Norwegian Defence University College (NDUC) in Oslo. She has been at the IFS since 2007. At the IFS, she also served as deputy director (2017-21), head of the Centre for Security (2019-21), and was director of research (2017–19). Katarzyna was a visiting scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University and a visiting research fellow at the Changing Character of War Centre at the University of Oxford (2016–17). She is a member of the Hoover Institution’s Arctic Security Initiative and was a research fellow at the Center for Naval Warfare Studies/Strategic Research Department at the US Naval War College, where she also cooperated closely with the War Gaming Department. In 2016, she was acting dean of the NDUC, where she teaches regularly.

Currently, she also serves as governing board member of the European Initiative for Security Studies and as member in the International Military Council on Climate Change and Security. Following her 2006 PhD on NATO enlargement, her research has focused on security, defense and strategic studies, in particular Russia’s military strategy, warfare, the Russian Navy, nuclear strategy, defense innovation and breakthrough technologies, maritime security and geopolitics in the Arctic. Her published research has appeared in SAIS Review of International Affairs, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Journal of Strategic Studies, Asia Policy, RUSI Journal, Politique Etrangère, International Relations, Jane’s Navy International, War on the Rocks, and others, including in books published by Cambridge and Oxford University Presses. Katarzyna is also a frequent commentator in the media, including in the New York Times, BBC World News, CNN Euronews, Le Monde, Politico, Deutsche Welle, Vice News, Newsweek, and many others.