Kate is a Research Associate in the Population Health Sciences Institute. She is a qualitative researcher, working on a large, mixed methods study which aims to evaluate the impact of a social prescribing intervention in Newcastle upon Tyne (NIHR Public Health Research (Call 16/122 Community groups and health promotion) 2018-2020).

Kate is conducting the ethnographic component of the research which seeks to explore how people's social worlds shape their responses to the intervention and the impact of the intervention within their local context. 

Qualifications

PhD Sociology, Newcastle University, July 2018

MA Sociology and Social Research (Distinction), Newcastle University, 2014

BSc Hons Sociology, Northumbria University, 1998

Kate's main research interests include Bourdieusian theory and classed inequality.

Her current ethnographic research builds on Bourdieusian approaches to class to explore how processes of classed inequality relate to engagement in social prescribing.

Kate completed her PhD entitled 'Feeding the Middle Classes: taste, classed identity and domestic food practices' in July 2018 with no corrections. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, her thesis examined the classed links between food and the performance of identities. This research focused on middle-class food practices to explore the ways in which food choices can reproduce class distinction. She employed a range of methods over two waves of research interactions with 27 participants. These included qualitative interviews, food biographies and life histories, personal community mapping, photo elicitation, kitchen and domestic ‘go-alongs’, and participant observation.

Prior to joining the Population health Sciences Institute, she worked as a researcher on the AHRC Connected Communities funded ‘Understanding Everyday Participation: Articulating Cultural Values’ project at Manchester University.

During her time as a doctoral student, Kate was employed as a teaching assistant at Newcastle University on the following undergraduate Sociology modules:

Doing Sociology, Knowing Sociology, Comparing Cultures

She also delivered lectures and workshops on Social Research Methods and Youth Cultures on the PARTNERS Assessed Sociology Summer school.

• Gibson K, Pollard TM, Moffatt S. Social prescribing and classed inequality: A journey of upward health mobility?. Social Science and Medicine 2021, 280, 114037.