Kate is a historian of Australia, with a particular focus on twentieth century social and cultural history. She teaches History and Global Studies at Monash University.

Kate’s research interests include the history of the family and disability history. She has published a major co-authored book on the history of fathering in Australia: Fathering: An Australian History (Melbourne University Publishing, 2025).

Kate is currently leading the Australian Research Council Discovery project ‘Australia’s first history of disability: Making a more inclusive Australia’. This 4-year project seeks to understand the experience of disability in Australian families since 1945, using innovative methods to co-produce data with people with disability and their families.

Kate’s other research interests include the history of higher education, student activism, and rural history. Kate authored (with co-author Professor Graeme Davison) a history of Monash University, University Unlimited: The Monash Story (Allen and Unwin, 2012). Her first book, Fears and Fantasies: Modernity, Gender, and the Rural-Urban Divide (Peter Lang, 2010) explored the role of rurality in shaping Australian culture and modernity more broadly.

Kate’s areas of research supervision include nineteenth and twentieth century Australian history, post-World War II social movements, and the histories of gender, the family and disability.