Claudine Leysinger studied Latin American history and political science at Columbia University and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She obtained her PhD in history at Columbia University with a dissertation on the history of photography, anthropology and archaeology in nineteenth-century Mexico.
She taught and assisted at Columbia University and worked as a free-lance translator in New York. From 2008 to 2015, she was Deputy Director of the Swiss Study Foundation, where she was in charge of the selection and mentoring of students.
She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Doctoral Academy of Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz as well as of the think tank reatch - research and technology Switzerland. She is also a member of the Foundation Board at the Foundation for Basic Research in Human Sciences. Since September 2015, she is General Manager of the Graduate Campus at the University of Zurich.