Dr Ekaterina Stepanova is a Leading Researcher at IMEMO (Institute of the World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow), Department of International Policy Issues, since 2010. In 2001-2009, she worked at IMEMO as a senior researcher heading a group on non-traditional threats. In 2007–2009, she was on leave from IMEMO to head the Programme on armed conflicts and conflict management at SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) where she also worked as a visiting researcher in 2003.
Dr Stepanova lectures in English on armed conflicts, terrorism and other form of organized collective violence at the European University in Saint-Petersburg (IMARES programme) and is a visiting lecturer at the European Peace University, Austria (MA in Peace and Conflict Studies). She is a member of editorial boards of two Routledge/Taylor&Francis journals Terrorism and Political Violence and Security Index.

Before joining IMEMO in 2001, she worked as a programme coordinator and researcher on security and foreign policy at the Moscow center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1995–2000), including a leave in 1998 to take up a MacArthur Foundation NGO Fellowship at King's College, University of London. In 2006–2009, she was a visiting lecturer at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. She was twice awarded a MacArthur Research Fellowship (in 2000 and 2003) and held several other international and Russian fellowships

In 1998, she also defended her Candidate of Sciences in History (PhD equiv.) dissertation on “The formation of the contemporary US model of regional conflict management, 1989–1997” at the History Department, Moscow State University (MGU) from which she got her university diploma (MA equiv.) in modern and contemporary history of countries of Western Europe and America in 1995, with honours and golden medal.

Dr Stepanova is the author of over 100 publications in eight languages, including six books in English, Russian and Spanish and two co-edited volumes.