horror film and television, British cinema and television, film censorship, audience and reception studies, cult film and television, film and television comedy, memory studies, local cinemagoing histories

Kate joined the Department of Arts in 2020, after working for thirteen years as a lecturer and senior lecturer in film studies at Aberystwyth University. She is the author of Trash or Treasure? Censorship and the Changing Meanings of the Video Nasties (MUP, 2007), Cultographies: The Evil Dead (Wallflower, 2011), and (with Martin Barker, Tom Philips and Sarah Ralph) Alien Audiences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). She is also the co-editor of Cult Film Stardom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), And Now for Something Completely Different: Critical Approaches to Monty Python (EUP, 2020), and Researching Historical Screen Audiences (EUP, 2022), and co-editor of the Hidden Horror Histories: Creativity in the Horror Genre book series (LUP). She is currently planning and developing further research on horror cinema and performance, and audience memories of horror film and television.  This includes a monograph, Remembering Ghostwatch: Horror, Childhood and the Home, and an edited collection, Researching Horror Fans and Audiences in the Twentieth-First Century, with James Rendell (University of South Wales).

She is a recognised expert on horror cinema, media audiences, and film censorship, and has been interviewed on these topics by BBC Radio Three, BBC Radio Four, BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Scotland and ABC News Australia, as well as appearing in the documentary Video Nasties: Draconian Days (Jake West, 2014).

Kate has previously supervised 6 PhD students to completion as principal supervisor, and 6 PhD students as second supervisor, with projects ranging from a textual and reception study of masculinity in the James Bond films to a study of the history of rural cinemagoing in Wales. She would welcome enquiries from potential PhD students who share her research interests. 

She also serves as the Department of Arts Postgraduate Research Lead, and is external examiner of the BA Film Studies programme at the University of the West of England.