Born in Astoria, Oregon (1943), Ann Katherine Isaacs studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and the State University of Milan. Research and teaching fellow at the Superior Normal School of Pisa (1971-1975), from 1975 to 2013 she was professor of Early Modern History at the University of Pisa, and until 2026 Rector’s delegate for European programmes.

Isaacs has been deeply involved in various initiatives for the modernization of higher education around the world, starting with the ECTS Pilot Project in 1989. ECTS and Bologna expert, she was active in the Tuning Process (Europe, Latin America, Canada, USA, Russia, China and Central Asia), she designed and coordinated a number of EU funded international projects, among which the European History Networks, the 6th Framework Network of Excellence CLIOHRES, a large-scale Tempus project to build a Central Asian Higher Education Area (www.tucahea.org), and a project to enhance Public Health education in Uzbekistan (www.uzhelth.org).

From 1 July 2018 to December 2020, she served as Vice-Chair of the Bologna Follow Up Group (BFUG) of the European Higher Education Area. She chaired the drafting committee for the Communiqué approved at the Rome Ministerial Conference in November 2020. Until September 2024 she co-chaired the BFUG’s Coordination Group on Global Policy Dialogue and its Bologna Implementation Coordination Group. She has participated in many key higher education projects including CALOHEE, CALOHE2, and MICROBOL. From 2019 to 2023 she served as the higher education expert for UNESCO’s TVET 2 Project in Iraq.