She is a columnist for the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung and El País, and has been an editor and international reporter for the publications Die Zeit and Der Spiegel, during which time she travelled to various conflict zones such as Colombia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. 

She studied philosophy at the London School of Economics, Harvard University and the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research under the tutelage of Axel Honneth. She has also taught at Yale University, among others. 

Since 2004, she has combined her work as a journalist with curating and presenting the Streitraum series of talks at the Schaubühne Theatre in Berlin. Her work denouncing violence, xenophobia, LGTBIphobia and human rights has earned her the German Booksellers' Peace Prize (2016) and the Theodor Wolff Prize, awarded by the German Journalists' Guild (2008), among other awards.

She has published a dozen books such as Contra el odio (Taurus, 2017) and Modos del deseo (Tres puntos, 2018), in which she reflects on hate speech, power relations and desire, identities and the role of violence in democratic societies.