Despoina Karakatsani studied at the School of Philosophy of the University of Athens and went on to complete postgraduate studies in Educational Sciences at the University of Paris 8–Saint-Denis–Vincennes and in the Didactics of History and Geography at the University of Paris 7–Jussieu. In 1998, she completed her PhD in the field of Educational Sciences at the University of Paris 8–Saint-Denis.

From 1998 to 2000, she taught at the University of Crete and the Democritus University of Thrace. In 2000, she was appointed to the Department of Philosophical and Social Studies at the University of Crete, and since 2004 she has been teaching at the Department of Social and Educational Policy at the University of the Peloponnese, as well as at the Hellenic Open University (HOU) since 2006.

She served as Chair of the Department of Social and Educational Policy at the University of the Peloponnese from 2015 to 2019, as Chair of the European network CiCe – Children’s Identity and Citizenship in Europe from 2016 to 2018, and as Chair of the Gender Equality Committee of the University of the Peloponnese from 2020 to 2022. Since 2024, she has been the Head of the Laboratory for the Study of Gender, Inequalities, and Discrimination in the same department.

She is a board member of the DARE Network (Democracy and Human Rights Education in Europe) and a member of the management committee of the HIDDEN program (History of Identity Documentation in European Nations: Citizenship, Nationality, and Migration), under the European Cooperation in Science and Technology – COST.

Her research interests include the history of educational theories and institutions, institutional pedagogy and the Freinet method, citizenship education, and intercultural education.