Kerstin was a postdoctoral fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and worked at the American University in Kurdistan (AUK) in the Kurdish region of Iraq.

Before her academic career, Kerstin worked as a journalist and media expert, including for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Resolute Support (RS) in Afghanistan, and for some nongovernmental organisations in South Sudan.

She is interested in intercultural exchanges and cooperation between so-called local and international staff in military and civilian interventions.

Her work has been published in Third World Quarterly, Millennium, and Development Policy Review.

Statebuilding Missions and Media Development: A Context-Sensitive Approach
Routledge, 2021, in the Intervention and Statebuilding series