She is Head of Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and Extraordinary Professor at the Martin Luther University in Halle/Saale, Germany.
She was awarded the Lise Meitner Habilitation Grant of the Ministry of Science and Research (NRW) and the five-year Minerva Professorship of the Max Planck Society.
Knörr was the MPI for Social Anthropology's Principal Investigator in the research project on ‘Integration and Conflict in Atlantic and Indian Ocean Societies’, conducted in collaboration with the Institute for Social Sciences (ICS) in Lisbon and in the Sierra Leone and Liberia section of the project ‘Traveling Models in Conflict Management’, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
Her current involvement in joint research projects includes membership in the executive board of the ‘Society and Culture in Motion’ programme at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.
She was Visiting Fellow/Researcher at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta (2001) and at Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone.