Katharine Donato is the Donald G. Herzberg Professor of International Migration and Director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She has examined many research questions related to migration, including the economic consequences of U.S. immigration policy; health consequences of migration; immigrant parent involvement in schools in New York, Chicago, and Nashville; deportation and its effects for immigrants; the great recession and its consequences for Mexican workers; U.S. legal visa system; and refugee and migrant integration. Her first book, Gender and International Migration: From Slavery to Present, was co-authored with Donna Gabaccia and published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 2015. Several years later, together with Elizabeth Ferris, she co-authored a second book, Refugees, Migration and Global Governance: Negotiating the Global Compacts, published by Routledge in 2019. Professor Donato has also co-edited 8 refereed journal issues and published more than 90 refereed journal articles and book chapters.
Since 2015, she has received funding for collaborative projects from the Mexican Human Rights Commission, National Science Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, and the GHR Foundation. Currently, she is the Principal Investigator on an RSF-funded project that examines the assimilation and mobility transitions of immigrant adults who entered the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor. She is also a co-PI on an NSF-funded project that examines how environmental stressors affect out-migration and the health of families in southwestern Bangladesh. Dr. Donato was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation during the 2017-2018 academic year. Prior to joining the Georgetown faculty, she was on the faculty of Vanderbilt and Rice Universities.