Veronika Lipphardt has worked on the history of the life sciences in the 20th century, particularly history of physical anthropology and human population genetics, in their political, social and cultural contexts. She is currently writing a book on human population genetics in the second half of the 20th century (Working Title: Narratives of Isolation, Patterns of Diversity. Human Population Genetics, 1950s-2000s).
From 2006 to 2009, she was a researcher in the BMBF-funded Collaborative Research Projct "Imagined Europeans. The Scientific Construction of Homo Europaeus" at Humboldt University Berlin, studying life scientists' imaginations of the "European" from the 18th century until today.
From 2009-2015, she was director of an Independent Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, focusing on 'Histories of knowledge about human variation in the 20th century'. Simultaneously, from 2011-2015, she also was Professor at the Free University, Berlin (Wissensgeschichte; Geschichte der Lebenswissenschaften).
Today she is working at the University College Freiburg, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.