Katherine Smith

Katherine Smith received her doctorate from the University of Wales and went onto a postdoc research fellowship in the Digital World Research Centre at the University of Surrey. Following her research at Surrey, she began lecturing at the University of Manchester. She has carried out ethnographic fieldwork in the North of England - in North Manchester for her doctoral research, and Preston, Lancashire as part of her postdoc research. Her research interests include fairness and equality, welfare reform, poverty, social policy, class, Englishness, political correctness and humour. She is author of Fairness, Class and Belonging in Contemporary England (2012, Palgrave Macmillan), co-editor of Extraordinary Encounters: The Ethnographic Interview and Authenticity ( in press, Berghahn) and her forthcoming book Living with Poverty and Dependence (Anthem Press).

Katherine welcomes expressions of interest in doctoral supervision from students who are interested in themes centred around issues of poverty, dependence, welfare policy, social class, social care, responsibility and ethnography in/of British social and cultural life.