Academic Profile
Kate Reed is Professor of Sociology and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She joined the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester in September 2024. Prior to this Kate was Director of the Sheffield Methods Institute at the University of Sheffield.

Kate 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. The book based on the findings of this project Understanding Baby Loss: Sociology of Life, Death and Post-mortem with Manchester University Press also won the BSA Foundation for Sociology of Health and Illness book prize in 2024. 

Research interests

Kate’s research interests span several areas including reproductive health, gender, technology, social theory, death and dying, and creative qualitative research methods. Her research involves creative and interdisciplinary collaboration and has led to demonstrable change in health service delivery and bereavement support. Kate also collaborates in her research with several non-academic partners, including Hospice UK,  the National Health Service (NHS), Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the National Bereavement Service.

Teaching interests

Kate has taught across several areas of sociology including social theory, health and illness, research methods and genetics as well as on interdisciplinary faculty facing social research programmes. She has also made considerable contributes to PhD research training. The aims of her teaching are threefold: firstly, to deliver high quality teaching, which is directly driven by her research, secondly to create teaching that will enhance the professional development and potential employability prospects of sociology and social science graduates, and thirdly to deliver teaching around health which has relevance for students both within and beyond the social sciences.