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 Northumbria University 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 (CUP, 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 (with Shellie McMurdo and Laura Mee) of the Hidden Horror Histories book series (LUP).

She is currently planning and developing further research on horror film acting, and audience memories of horror film and television.  This includes a monograph, Remembering Ghostwatch: Horror, Childhood and the Home, and (with James Rendell) an edited collection, Researching Horror Fans and Audiences in the Twenty-First Century. She is also Co-Investigator (alongside Cat Lester) of the AHRC-funded Youth and Horror Research Network.

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 documentaries Video Nasties: Draconian Days (Jake West, 2014) and Damaged: The Very British Obscenity of David Hamilton-Grant (Sarah Appleton, 2023).

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 is also external examiner of the BA Film Studies programme at the University of the West of England.