Christine Fischer studied Musicology, Art history and Italian in Munich and Los Angeles (on scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service).
After working freelance for the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation, she was an adjunct at the Institute of Musicology at the University of Bern, Switzerland.
She received her doctorate in 2004; her dissertation was on the compositional accomplishments of the Saxon electoral princess Maria Antonia Walpurgis (Bärenreiter 2007).
She has been Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) Professor at the Schola Cantorum Basilienis since May 2007.
As the head of an interdisciplinary research team on Italian opera at German-speaking courts during the 17th and 18th centuries, her work follows two main strands: the development of a scholarly methodology for approximating historical opera performances, and the conception and scholarly support of the opera class's yearly projects at the Schola Cantorum.