Dr Kate Houlden
Senior Lecturer in English Literature

Summary

Kate's research focuses on the intersections between queer studies, materialist feminism and world-literature. She is currently writing a monograph, Female Migrant Domestic Workers in Post-Millennial Global Fiction for the Palgrave series, New Comparisons in World Literature. With Sharae Deckard, she has a special issue in Feminist Theory on 'Social Reproduction Feminism and World-Culture’ (2024), including an essay on the gendered precarity of neoliberalisation as seen in the work of Pat Barker and Mike McCormack. She also has a chapter due out on 'Commodifying Care: Migrant Literature and Materialist Feminism' in Commodities and Literature (CUP; 2024)

Kate is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has over a decade of teaching experience across UK Higher Education, having obtained her AHRC-funded PhD on the subject of sexuality in Caribbean literature from Queen Mary, University of London in 2010. She has previously held permanent lectureships at Anglia Ruskin and Liverpool John Moores Universities, and has also taught at the University of Surrey and Queen Mary University of London.

Goes by she/her pronouns. Currently Interim Director of Equality & Diversity for Arts and Humanities.

Qualifications

• 2010: PhD in English, Queen Mary University of London
• 2007: Distinction, MA Writing in the Modern Age, Queen Mary University of London
• 2000: First Class, BA (Hons.) English Literature & Communications, University of Liverpool

Responsibility

Kate is Interim Director of Equality & Diversity for Arts and Humanities. She is also joint Admissions Tutor for English - if you're interested in studying at Brunel, do feel free to email any questions directl

At previous institutions, she has been Deputy REF Convenor (ARU), Examinations Officer (LJMU), Dissertation Co-ordinator and Additional Learning Support Officer (Surrey).

She reviews for numerous journals and presses, as well as being External Examiner at Nottingham Trent University. Kate is also an Associate Editor of the OUP journal Contemporary Women's Writing.