Katrien Keune studied chemistry at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She did her PhD research at the AMOLF institute in Amsterdam leading to her doctorate at the UvA in 2005. She was a postdoc researcher at AMOLF, the National Gallery in London and the Cultural Heritage Agency in Amsterdam. She worked as a researcher at TU Delft and at the Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences at the UvA. In 2015, she joined the Rijksmuseum where she became Head of Science in 2019. Since 2018, Keune has held a part-time appointment as associate professor at the UvA.