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 also teaches courses in English at the European University in Saint-Petersburg (IMARES programme) and Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona (MA in Conflictology). 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 1998, she also defended her Candidate of Sciences (History) 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 in modern and contemporary history of countries of Western Europe and America in 1995, with honours and golden medal.

She lectured on armed conflicts and terrorism at the Department of World Politics, Moscow State University (2005–2006) and was a visiting lecturer at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (2006–2009) and Center for Peace Studies at the European University in Stadtschlaining, Austria (2009). She was twice awarded a MacArthur Research Fellowship (in 2000 and 2003), held several other international and Russian fellowships and is the author of over 90 publications in eight languages, including four books and two co-edited volumes in English and Russian.