About Me

Hi, I’m Kat and I’m a lecturer in Political Communication, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK.

My research interests are in corpus linguistics, critical discourse analysis, digital humanities, gender, queer theory, language and ideology and language and politics. My PhD was on the media representation of the British women’s suffrage movement and you can read more about it on this page about women’s suffrage.

I’m interested in LGBTQI+, queer and gender issues from both an academic and activist perspective. I am particularly focused on issues affecting non-binary people and non-white trans and/or queer people. Most recently, I have worked with Public Health England, Stonewall and the Race Equality Foundation to explore and begin to address some of these issues. My current research examines pronoun use when representing transgender people in the media.

I completed both my BA (English Language and Literature) and MA (Corpus Linguistics) at the University of Liverpool, and in 2009 moved to Nottingham to carry out doctoral research. I passed my PhD viva in May 2013 and graduated from the University of Nottingham in December 2013. I have previously taught at Roehampton University, the University of Sussex, Oxford Brookes University, Birmingham City University, Queen Mary University of London and the University of Nottingham. Way back when I was a postgraduate student, I was the Trans Officer for the Nottingham University LGBT Network 2010-11, represented the Network at the NUS LGBT Conference in 2010 and 2011 and helped win the Network the NUS LGBT Society of the Year award.

In my spare time(!) I enjoy reading and, as evidenced by this site, messing around with computers. I consider tea a physical and psychological necessity and seem to be curating a not insignificant collection of teas.

This blog came about because apparently it’s how all the cool kids are disseminating their research these days. I discuss my research, but I also try to write about how my research relates to present day protest movements, activism, books, academic experiences, other things I’m interested in, and sometimes my life as an early career researcher.

I’m the older sibling of the much cooler Dr Jen Gupta, astrophysicist, outreach officer and giant nerd. You should visit her site! Seriously, she’s much cooler than me.