Karen Mumford is a Professor who specialises in applied labour economics. She received her PhD from the Australian National University (ANU). Karen’s research topics include: wage bargaining; training; employment dynamics; absenteeism; discrimination and the relative labour market position of women; networking in labour markets; job satisfaction; and implications from using the family as the unit of analysis. Karen has been the Chair of the Royal Economic Society (RES) Women's Committee, Convenor of the UK Work Pensions and Economics Group (WPEG), a Harkness Fellow and a Leverhulme Fellow. She is currently an elected Member of the RES Council, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). She was appointed CBE for services to Economics and Labour Market Diversity in the 2016 New Year’s Honours List.

She joined IZA as a Research Fellow in February 2004.