Her academic work analyzes the history and performance of the international environmental architecture and the evolution of US international environmental policy. Her policy work seeks to bring analytical rigor and innovative input to the international negotiations on reforming the UN system for environment. She has published on governance, globalization, and the environment and has produced three short documentaries on global environmental governance. She is the editor of the Governance and Sustainability Issue Brief Series and serves on the editorial board of Global Environmental Politics. She was also one of the coordinating lead authors for the policy chapter of the landmark environmental assessment – Global Environmental Outlook-5.
From 2005 to 2010, Professor Ivanova was on the faculty at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Previously, she worked at the Environment Directorate of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris and at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in Stockholm. In 2009-2010, she was Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Ecologic Institute in Berlin, is the recipient of the 2007 Professor of the Year Award (from Members 13, a student organization at the College of William and Mary), the 2010 Mary Lyon Award from Mount Holyoke College and the 2010 Goddess Artemis Award from the Euro-American Women’s Council.
