Bio
Kate is a lecturer in STS and Psychology for the Department of Humanities at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey. She is a recent graduate of the Science and Technology Studies PhD program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where she wrote her dissertation on the sociocultural effects of weight loss surgery. She earned her Master's of Science in 2014 from RPI and her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science in 2010 from the University of Southern Maine. Her research interests include fat studies, biopolitics, language, identity formation, health and nutrition expertise, and the social institution of medicine. Outside of school, Kate enjoys swimming, camping, gaming, fiber arts, and her frequently vexing cat, Cowgirl.
Projects
Reworkings of Health and Well-being
- I am currently in the planning stages of a project which will investigate a variety of groups that share a common,
non-conventional understanding of health practices leading them to engage in particular ways with dominant
systems of expertise and knowledge. I posit that, though understandings between these groups are often in conflict,
there will be some common underlying system to their sense-making.
The Fat Subject in Transition
- For my PhD research, I studied the use and
effects of the concepts of will, self-control, choice, and knowledge in the discourse on weight loss surgery (WLS), allowing
me to study a very particular technoscientific framing of the "problem" of fatness, one that often implicates women
and current or potential mothers as especially in need of biomedical intervention. Through ethnographic interviews,
I revealed that concerns about will and particularly about the possibility of post-surgical alcoholism are present
among most WLS recipients, despite a perceived void in physician response to these risks.
Below Stairs
- Because of my background in computer science, I collaborated with a variety of faculty at RPI on developing web based projects.
The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Communication and Media Department and Rensselaer County Historical Society have an ongoing
collaboration, which has produced among other things an augmented reality experience for visitors to explore the daily life of
servants approximately 150 years ago in its Hart-Cluett House. I served as the principal technical developer through two
different implementations of the app and worked alongside RPI C&M faculty and students and RCHS staff to design and script the
experience.
An Empirical Investigation of Factors that Contribute to Perceptions of Fatness
- For my Master's research, I attempted to determine what perceptions an individual utilizes when
classifying a person as fat or not fat. The answer to this question provides an important tool for
use towards investigating the psychosocial implications of fatness and how fat subjects are perceived/constructed.