Kate is Co-Director of the ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre and Professor of Social Policy and Criminal Justice at the University of York. Her research focuses on how vulnerability is experienced, governed and understood.

Her work centres the lived experiences of those deemed vulnerable, and includes studies on vulnerability and young people, child sexual exploitation, policing of county lines drug networks and policing interventions with sex workers. She is especially interested in how to improve policy and practice responses to marginalised people who are vulnerable and also involved with the justice system as offenders.

Before her academic career Kate worked for a decade in local and national voluntary sector organisations supporting vulnerable people. For 15 years she was a Trustee for Basis Yorkshire, an award-winning regional sex work and child sexual exploitation support project.