Hello and welcome to my website. I’m Dr Kate Woodthorpe, a British academic who specialises in the social aspects of death, dying and bereavement. In other words, I’m interested in what makes us human: our mortality.
My interest in this area stems from personal experience, which I have written about elsewhere and which is always being expanded as I age myself and now have my own family. Read more about my campaigns under my married name Kate Tuckwell.
I currently work as a Reader in Sociology at the University of Bath, UK. There, I am director of the Centre for Death and Society, the UK’s only research centre devoted to the study of social aspects of death, dying and bereavement. I am an experienced academic, having completed my PhD at the University of Sheffield in 2007 and working solidly in the higher education sector since. I was editor of the journal Mortality between 2015 and 2019, and now sit on its editorial board as well as the editorial boards for Death Studies and Omega. I have acted as Special Advisor to the Department for Work and Pensions (2016) and Competition and Markets Authority (2019 and 2020). In 2023 I was awarded UKRI funding to work on a project to submit to the Law Commission.
While I specialise in talking about all things funeral, families and bereavement, I am also really keen to debunk some of the mysteries around being an academic, and have written a book called Survive and Thrive in Academia on starting a career in higher education, and how to make strategic decisions so that you go from strength to strength. I have also written about being a carer for my son and the value of auto/biography and risks of personal disclosure within academia.
This personal website is a way to contact me, find out more about the work I do, and to
see how I might be able to work with you. I hope and trust you will find it helpful. Do get in touch.
Kate Woodthorpe 