Sehnbruch was born in Oberhausen, Germany, and raised in London (where she attended to the German School London), and in Kirchen, Germany.
Sehnbruch studied modern and medieval languages at Jesus College, Cambridge.
During her undergraduate degree, she worked as a trainee auditor for Price Waterhouse in Buenos Aires, where she gained first-hand experience of development issues.
After graduating from Cambridge, she worked as an equity analyst for Goldman Sachs Asset Management in London.

In 1997, she moved to Brussels to work at the European Commission on the Mexico Desk of the Directorate-General for External Relations with the team that negotiated the Global Agreement on Free Trade with Mexico.
That year, she also returned to the University of Cambridge to undertake a Masters in Philosophy (MPhil) in Latin American Studies, focussing on economics and sociology.

She subsequently undertook a PhD in social and political sciences at the University of Cambridge, which analysed the quality of employment in the Chilean labour market, and was published as the book The Chilean Labor Market: A Key to understanding Latin American Labor Markets by Palgrave Macmillan in 2006.

Following her PhD, Sehnbruch worked as a lecturer and senior scholar at the University of California at Berkeley.
In 2009, she moved to Chile where she worked at the Faculty of Economics of the Universidad de Chile and as director of the Institute for Public Policy at the Universidad Diego Portales.
During this time, Sehnbruch was instrumental in co-ordinating a significant grant from the Chilean government to set up a research hub on social conflict and cohesion (Centro de Estudios de Conflicto y Cohesión Social), based at the University of Chile and the Catholic University of Chile.
COES undertakes multidisciplinary research on subjects related to social conflict and cohesion in Chile.
It brings together a group of more than 50 researchers from all social science disciplines as well as a network of international researchers from around the world.
Sehnbruch was a member of the COES board for five years.

Sehnbruch has consistently worked on the subject of the quality of employment in developing countries.
Her work conceptualises and measures the quality of employment using the theoretical framework of Amartya Sen's capability approach and the empirical methodology developed by Sabina Alkire and James Foster.
Her work argues that measuring the performance of a developing country's labour market by focusing only on the quantity of jobs, as expressed by its unemployment rate, is as simplistic as measuring a country's level of development only by its GDP per capita level.
More sophisticated, multidimensional measures are required that focus on the quality of jobs.
Sehnbruch was born in Oberhausen, Germany, and raised in London (where she attended to the German School London), and in Kirchen, Germany. Sehnbruch studied modern and medieval languages at Jesus College, Cambridge. During her undergraduate degree, she worked as a trainee auditor for Price Waterhouse in Buenos Aires, where she gained first-hand experience of development issues. After graduating from Cambridge, she worked as an equity analyst for Goldman Sachs Asset Management in London.
In 1997, she moved to Brussels to work at the European Commission on the Mexico Desk of the Directorate-General for External Relations with the team that negotiated the Global Agreement on Free Trade with Mexico. That year, she also returned to the University of Cambridge to undertake a Masters in Philosophy (MPhil) in Latin American Studies, focussing on economics and sociology.
She subsequently undertook a PhD in social and political sciences at the University of Cambridge, which analysed the quality of employment in the Chilean labour market, and was published as the book The Chilean Labor Market: A Key to understanding Latin American Labor Markets by Palgrave Macmillan in 2006.
Following her PhD, Sehnbruch worked as a lecturer and senior scholar at the University of California at Berkeley. In 2009, she moved to Chile where she worked at the Faculty of Economics of the Universidad de Chile and as director of the Institute for Public Policy at the Universidad Diego Portales. During this time, Sehnbruch was instrumental in co-ordinating a significant grant from the Chilean government to set up a research hub on social conflict and cohesion (Centro de Estudios de Conflicto y Cohesión Social), based at the University of Chile and the Catholic University of Chile. COES undertakes multidisciplinary research on subjects related to social conflict and cohesion in Chile. It brings together a group of more than 50 researchers from all social science disciplines as well as a network of international researchers from around the world. Sehnbruch was a member of the COES board for five years.
Sehnbruch has consistently worked on the subject of the quality of employment in developing countries. Her work conceptualises and measures the quality of employment using the theoretical framework of Amartya Sen's capability approach and the empirical methodology developed by Sabina Alkire and James Foster. Her work argues that measuring the performance of a developing country's labour market by focusing only on the quantity of jobs, as expressed by its unemployment rate, is as simplistic as measuring a country's level of development only by its GDP per capita level. More sophisticated, multidimensional measures are required that focus on the quality of jobs.
Kirsten Sehnbruch