Biography
Kate received her BA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, later receiving an MA, and completed her doctorate at the University of St Andrews. She completed her DipPsych(Open) with the Open University, and a PGCert and PGDip in Counselling at Abertay, where she also completed her Graduate Certificate in Higher Education Teaching.
Her doctoral studies at the University of St Andrews, examined the impact of narrative rehearsal on memories of autobiographical events in people experiencing low mood and depression, and she has been a therapeutic practitioner for ten years.
Kate joined the teaching staff at Abertay as a part-time lecturer in 2012, and later as a full-time lecturer, academic curriculum manager and became Head of Division in 2018. She runs, along with Sally Lumsdaine, Julia McLeod and Mhairi Thurston, the Tayside Centre for Counselling, a large-scale project into the development of the pluralistic framework for counselling. Through this she sits on the UK-wide Research and Training Clinic Consortium a collaborative research project with four central and two affiliated university research clinics. She is involved in projects examining the role of counselling for people with long-term health conditions (both medical and psychological), and heads a research project into the emotional and psychological needs of people with diabetes. She has published research on training for practitioners in mental health, and is co-author on chapters concerning pluralistic integration as a framework for counselling and psychotherapy, as well as an introductory text in the approach in 2021
Kate is a member of BACP, BPS, a Senior Fellow of the HEA, and a founder member and chair of the Pluralistic Practioner Network and chairs the International Conference on Pluralistic Counselling and Psychotherapy. In 2020 she was elected on to the Governance Board of BACP as a trustee of the organisation
