Katherine is a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at Keele University, appointed in 2008. She transitioned to Keele’s Education and Scholarship pathway in 2020 and has successfully obtained a competitive Keele Institute for Innovation and Teaching Excellence fellowship supporting institution-wide staff development in 2021, and a scholarship supporting developing her programme of research and teaching innovation in 2023.
A key strand of Katherine’s work is questioning how we develop our curricula for the challenges of the 21st century, knitting together disciplinary knowledge and conceptual understanding and vital transferrable skills, social justice and sustainability into a pedagogy of compassionate connectivism. This was recognised by a Staff Sustainability Champion Green Gown award in 2020, and she has developed and delivered CPD workshops on various aspects of her teaching, most recently mini-problem-based learning drawing together systems thinking and the UN Sustainable development goals in global and diverse contexts.
Katherine works towards equity and the inclusion of diverse voices and perspectives advocating for widening participation in higher education through outreach activities and prioritising accessibility in learning environments, as well as working on projects decolonising the curriculum, faith and belief in the curriculum, and supporting students from historically minoritised groups to excel in higher education.
Committed to sector-wide chemistry curriculum development, she is actively involved with the Royal Society of Chemistry, Katherine chairs the Chemistry Education Research Interest Group, supporting others as they develop their scholarship and chemistry education research, and is a member of the Education Community Council. Previous roles have included being a member of the Education in Chemistry editorial board and chair of the North Staffordshire Local section.