Katrina Lee-Koo is a Professor, Head of the Politics and International Relations program and Director of the Gender, Peace and Security research centre at Monash University.

Katrina teaches and researches in the fields of inclusive peace and security, feminist international relations, and women and leadership. 

Her most recent book publications are:  Gender Politics: Navigating Political Leadership in Australia (co-edited with Zareh Ghazarian, 2021, New South Publishing), Young Women and Leadership, (co-edited with Lesley Pruitt, New York: Routledge, 2020), Children and Global Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2015 with Kim Huynh and Bina D’Costa) and Ethics and Global Security (Routledge, 2014 with Anthony Burke and Matt McDonald).  

She has also published in her areas of research in:  Contemporary Security Policy, Journal of Global Security Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Political Science Review, International Studies Perspectives, Third World Quarterly, Feminist Review, the Australian Journal of Political Science and elsewhere.

She has been chief investigator of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project entitled ‘Gender after Conflict’ (ending December 2019) and an ARC Linkage Project ‘Towards Inclusive Peace: Monitoring the Gender Provisions in Peace Settlements’ with partner organization the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). She has held research partnerships across Australian government departments and with international organisations and NGOs.

Katrina has won numerous teaching and leadership awards including the Monash Dean of Arts Award for Excellence in Postgraduate Teaching, the Monash Dean of Arts Commendation for Research Enterprise, the ANU Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the ANU's Gender Champion Award and the national Australian Teaching and Learning Council's Citation for Excellence in Teaching.

She is currently the book review editor for the International feminist Journal of Politics and on the editorial board for the Australian Journal of Political Science, the Australian Journal of Politics and History, the Australian Journal of International Affairs and Politics and Gender. She is on the advisory board for the Royal Holloway Gender Institute and series editor for the Palgrave Studies in International Relations.

Katrina completed her undergraduate degrees at the University of Queensland, her Master degree at the University of Nottingham, and her PhD at the Australian National University where she was employed from 2004-2014. In 2015 she joined the Politics program at Monash University.

As a trained Politics and International Relations scholar with a background in diplomatic history, Katrina’s areas of research expertise intersect gender studies, women's participation and leadership, and peace and conflict analysis. These research areas intersect in the following ways:

• The gendered politics of armed conflict
• Women's participation and leadership in peace and security
• Children, armed conflict and peacebuilding
• Feminist IR theory
• Children and IR theory
• Ethics and global security
• The UN’s Women, Peace and Security, Youth, Peace and Security, and Children and Armed Conflict agendas.