Dr Kate Houlden
Senior Lecturer in English Literature

Summary

Goes by she/her.

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 her own 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; 2025), and another on 'Cleaning in the Context of Financial Crisis: Stephanie Land’s Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother’s Will to Survive (2019) and Michelle Kirsch’s Clean: A Story of Addiction, Recovery and the Removal of Stubborn Stains (2019)' in Women in World-Literature (LUP; 2025). 

In 2022, Kate gained Brunel Athena Swan funding for one year's research leave for a project, ‘Global Representations of Women’s Work’. Subsequently, she gained Techne funding for a PhD training event, 'Approaches to Researching and Representing Women's Work'. During 2023-4 Kate hosted a funded visiting PhD placement funded by CAPES, Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior of Brazil, which led to a Brunel partnership symposium with UERN Brazil on the ‘Latin American Gothic’ in 2024.

Kate is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has over a decade of teaching experience across UK Higher Education. In 2024, she was nominated by students for the Ken Darby-Dowman Memorial Prize for contribution to student experience and, at various institutiions has been nominated for and/or won student-led awards for 'Excellent Teaching', 'Excellent Module', 'Outstanding Personal Tutor' and 'Inclusive Lecturer.

She 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.

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 Admissions Tutor for English - if you're interested in studying at Brunel, do feel free to email any questions direct!

She is also on the Management Committee of the Staff Neurodivergent Network. During 2024, she was Interim Director of Equality & Diversity for Arts and Humanities. 

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