Prof. Dr. Karin Hediger is a psychotherapist and researcher at the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Basel, and at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Switzerland. Together with her team, she investigates the effects of animal-assisted interventions and mechanisms of human-animal interactions. Since August 2020, she fills the endowed chair for Anthrozoology at the Open University in the Netherlands. She completed her PhD in Rostock, Germany, in the field of human-animal interaction and holds certification in animal-assisted therapy, a diploma in equine-assisted therapy and recently founded a centre for animal-assisted psychotherapy.

Karin is the president of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Human-Animal Relationship (IEMT Switzerland) and gives courses on animal-assisted interventions in many different institutes