Katharine M. Donato

Katharine M. Donato is the Donald G. Herzberg Professor of International Migration and former Director of the Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Her work focuses on migration's economic, health, and social dimensions, including U.S. immigration policy, refugee integration, environmental migration drivers, and migrant health. Donato has held faculty positions at Vanderbilt and Rice Universities and was a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation (2017–2018).

Her research explores topics such as deportation impacts, Mexican labor markets, and the legal visa system. Key contributions include co-authoring Gender and International Migration: From Slavery to Present (2015) and Refugee and Migrant Integration (2019). She leads projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Russell Sage Foundation (RSF), and others, including studies on Bangladeshi environmental migrants and assimilation of unaccompanied minors in the U.S.

Donato’s work bridges disciplines, linking migration to health, policy, and climate change. Recent articles address extreme weather’s role in migration, medical-legal partnerships for immigrants, and predictive modeling of forced migration using social media data. Her scholarship emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches to global governance challenges and migrant well-being.