Katja Freistein is Head of Research Unit, Centre for Global Cooperation Research, University of Duisburg-Essen. She was formerly a visiting professor at University of Münster, Germany. Her main research interests are international institutions/organisations, sociology of organisations, global inequality, international development, peace and conflict studies, quantification and numbers in world society, discourse theory and Southeast Asia. Among her important publications is Institutioneller Wandel im (Kon)Text: Sicherheitsgemeinschaft und Charta im Diskurs der ASEAN (Nomos, 2012).