Kate is the York deputy director of the ESRC Vulnerability & Policing Futures Research Centre and a Senior Lecturer in Social Policy and Criminal Justice based in the School of Business and Society at the University of York.

Her research focuses on how vulnerability is experienced, governed and understood. She is especially interested in policy and practice responses to people who are deemed to be vulnerable and also deviant or criminal.

Her work includes studies on young men’s experiences of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, on vulnerability and young people, co-produced research on policing interventions with sex workers and working with sexually exploited young people to make an animation and set of resources about their life stories.

Before her academic career Kate worked for a decade in local and national voluntary sector organisations supporting sex workers, sexually exploited girls, young people affected by drug use, and woman and children experiencing domestic abuse. For 15 years she was a Trustee for Basis Yorkshire, an award-winning regional sex work and child sexual exploitation support project.