Katarina Sydow is the Director of the Human Rights and Privatization Project. Her research focuses on poverty and inequality, and the human rights impacts of commodifying essential services such as health, social care, water and energy.

Katarina has a broad interest in international law and human rights issues. She is a member of the United Nations Development Programme’s ExpRes Roster of pre-vetted experts, and has contributed to policy briefs concerning the Women, Peace and Security agenda and the Global Focal Point for the Rule of Law. Katarina was also an NYU International Law and Human Rights Fellow at the United Nations Department of Peace Operations, Justice and Corrections Service.

Before moving to the United States, Katarina worked as a barrister in the UK for eight years, where she was ranked in Legal 500 and Chambers and Partners. She specialized in healthcare and mental capacity law and regularly represented individuals with mental illnesses and disabilities to argue that they had the right to make their own decisions, or to challenge aspects of their care and treatment.

Katarina holds an LLM in International Legal Studies from NYU, a Graduate Diploma in Law from City, University of London, and a BA in Modern History from the University of Oxford. At NYU, she was an Arthur T. Vanderbilt Scholar and the recipient of the Jerome Lipper Award for International Legal Studies and the Howard Greenberger Award for comparative law.