Barbara Koremenos is an associate professor of world politics in the department of political science at the University of Michigan. Prior to coming to Michigan, she taught in the political science department at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Koremenos has published extensively on international law and international institutions in edited books, book chapters, and refereed journals such as International Organization. She is one of the editors of Rational Design: Explaining the Form of International Institutions, which argues that international organizations vary widely in key institutional features such as membership, scope, and flexibility because international actors are goal-seeking agents who make certain institutional design choices to solve specific cooperation problems they face in different issue-areas. Using a rational-design approach, the book explores several features of institutions and explain their variation in terms of independent variables that characterize cooperation.