Professor Kate Reed

Kate Reed is a Professor of Sociology and became Director of Sheffield Methods Institute in February 2022. Kate joined the Department of Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield in January 2004, and worked with SMI from 2017 as Faculty of Social Sciences Director of Doctoral Programmes. Her teaching interests are focused in the areas of health, gender and ethnicity. She has a strong interest in creative qualitative methods and is well known particularly for her work on sensitive research. She has written and researched extensively on reproductive health. She was the Principal Investigator of the research project: ‘End of or Start of Life’? Visual Technology and the Transformation of Traditional Post-Mortem funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. This project aimed to understand how bereaved parents, along with the professionals who care for them, both feel about, and experience, the minimally invasive post-mortem process. This project won the ESRC Outstanding Societal Impact Prize  in 2019. Kate has published widely in the areas of pregnancy screening, reproductive loss, gender, visual health technology and social theory.