Dr Kate McAllister
She/Her
About
Dr Kate McAllister is a Research Associate on the ‘Buzzers for Bedwetters’: Incontinence and the Urinary Body in Britain, 1870-1970 project.
Kate joined the University of Kent in November 2024. Since completing her PhD at the University of Sheffield in January 2023, Kate has held various research and teaching roles which have informed her interest in collaborative interdisciplinary working and in public engagement. She is also currently employed as Editorial Assistant to the Gender & History journal.
Research interests
Kate's core research interests are in modern British medical and psychiatric history, focusing on the themes of mental health, long-term illness and inequality. Fully-funded by a generous grant from the Wellcome Trust, her PhD project explored how and why the binary concepts of mental/physical, acute/chronic were built into the structures of healthcare in Britain during the early twentieth century, through tracing the shifting perceptions of and approaches to long-term viral illness. Completing this project whilst living through a global pandemic centrally shaped the way that Kate thinks about history and about how it might best be used as a critical tool in the present. Since completing her PhD, Kate has prepared and disseminated her research in a range of formats, including academic journal articles, conference papers, podcast episodes and radio interviews. She is currently preparing a postdoctoral research project which will explore the history of chronic pain in modern Britain through tracing its relationship to the welfare state.
As a Research Associate, Kate plans to prepare research which will explore how and why perceptions of urinary incontinence changed in the late twentieth century, as it became seen as a chronic condition common in the elderly.