Full Professor
Kath is a Geography Professor at University College Dublin. Her research interests lie in Social and Cultural Geographies, and particular people's spatial experiences of sexualities and genders. She has worked with those marginalised because of their sexual and gender identities, exploring how lives can be ameliorated in ways that take place seriously. Kath's work has focused on the impact of legislative changes to sexual and gender equalities in the 21st Century, where she seeks to use research to make a difference to people's lives. She develops innovative insights into contemporary experiences of power relations as they are created through everyday spaces, particularly around gender and sexualities.
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Kath has also worked on those who are opposed to sexual and gender equalities, with Catherine Nash and Andrew Gorman-Murray, developing the concept of heteroactivism. She currently leads the Beyond Opposition research, an ERC consolidator project that seeks to investigate the experiences of people who do not support some or all of the changes to sexual and gender equalities in the 21st century and explore new ways of engaging difference, differently.
Kath's academic career began at the Loughborough University where she read for a BSc in Geography, Sports Science and Physical Education (1998). She moved to the University of Sheffield attaining a MA in Social and Cultural Geographies (1999). She received a full bursary at the University of Gloucestershire and undertook research for her PhD on non-heterosexual women’s everyday lives, which she completed in 2002. She joined the National University of Ireland, Maynooth before becoming a Lecturer at the University of Brighton in January 2003. She was made a professor in 2014 and moved to UCD to take up a role of full professor in School of Geography in 2019. She is currently a member of the RIA.