Dr. phil. Katharina Beier majored in Political Science and German Language and Literature at the University of Greifswald in North-Eastern Germany. Supported by Erasmus, she also studied in Växjö/Sweden. After finishing her master thesis she received a 2-year PhD-scholarship from the State of Mecklenburg-Pomerania and worked as a teaching assistant in the field of Political Theory/History of Political Ideas at the Greifswald Dept. for Political Science. Financed by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) she was a visiting scholar at the New School of Social Research in New York in 2004. From 2005 to 2008 Katharina worked as a research and teaching assistant at the chair of Political Theory and History of Political Ideas in Greifswald. After submitting her PhD thesis “Between persistence and revision. The biomedical challenge of political liberalism” in February 2008 (published 2009 at Campus), she worked as Project Officer and research assistant in the Tiss.EU project on ethical and legal aspects of research with human tissues and cells at the Inst. for Medical Ethics and History of Medicine in Goettingen. As of Oktober 2010, Katharina is in charge of coordinating the research group “Autonomy and trust in modern medicine.” At the same time she is working as research assistant in the sub-project “Reproductive Autonomy as Family Autonomy? On Family and Trust in Reproductive Medicine“ at the Dept. for Medical Ethics and History of Medicine.

• Concepts of autonomy and trust in modern medicine
• Ethics of reproductive medicine
• Bioethics and biopolitics
• Ethical and legal aspects of biobank research
• Political theories (contractualism, utilitarianism, political liberalism)

• Beier, K/Jordan, I/Schicktanz, S/Wiesemann, C (im Erscheinen): Familien und Patientenorganisationen als kollektive Akteure in der Bioethik: vernachlässigt und unterschätzt? In: H Steinfath/C Wiesemann u.a. (Hg.): Autonomie und Vertrauen in der modernen Medizin. Springer.
• Beier, K/Lenk, C (2015): Biobankung strategies and regulative approaches in the EU: recent perspectives. Journal of Biorepository Science for Applied Medicine 3, 69-81. 
• Beier, K (2015): Surrogate Motherhood – a trust-based approach. Journal of Medicine & Philosophy. Advance Access published October 8, 2015; doi:10.1093/jmp/jhv024
• Nussbeck, S/Wemheuer, W/Beier, K (2015): Why brain banking should be regarded as a special type of biobanking: ethical, practical, and data-Management challenges. Journal of Biorepository Science for Applied Medicine 3, 3-14.
• Beier, Katharina (2013): Reproduktive Autonomie als biopolitische Strategie. Eine Kritik des liberalen fortpflanzungsmedizinischen Diskurses aus bioethischer Perspektive. In: Finkelde, Dominik/Inthorn, Julia/Reder, Michael (Hrsg.): Normiertes Leben. Biopolitik und die Funktionalisierung ethischer Diskurse. Campus, 69-92.
• Beier, Katharina/Wiesemann, Claudia (2013): Reproduktive Autonomie in der liberalen Demokratie - eine ethische Analyse. In: Wiesemann, Claudia/Simon, Alfred (Hg.): Patientenautonomie. Theoretische Grundlagen, praktische Anwendungen. Mentis, 199-215.
• Beier, K. (2011): Die Herausforderung der liberalen Gerechtigkeitstheorie durch die moderne Biomedizin. Überlegungen im Anschluss an Buchanans et al. „From Chance to Choice“. In: Clemens Kauffmann/Jörg Sigwart (Hg.): Biopolitik im liberalen Staat. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 99-122.
• Beier, K. (2011): Beyond the dichotomy of individualism and solidarity: Participation in biobank research in Sweden and Norway. In: C. Lenk/N. Hoppe/K. Beier und C. Wiesemann (Hg.): Human tissue research – A discussion of the ethical and legal challenges from a European perspective. Oxford University Press.
• Beier, K./Wiesemann, C. (2010): Zur Dialektik der Elternschaft im Zeitalter der Reprogenetik. Ein ethischer Dialog. In: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, Jg. 58, Heft 6, 855-871.