Kate Woodthorpe

Kate Woodthorpe is a Professor in the Department of Social & Policy Sciences at the University of Bath, where she serves as co-director of the Centre for Death and Society and Faculty Director of Knowledge Exchange for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Science. She is the only UK academic serving on the editorial boards of the three major death studies journals: Death Studies, Omega and Mortality, and is a former Editor-in-Chief of Mortality. Her extensive research portfolio spans over 20 years of funded research on funeral costs and practice, families at the end of life, cemetery usage, and professional development in the deathcare industry.

Woodthorpe's research interests center on end-of-life experiences, with particular focus on funeral poverty, bereavement practices, and the social dimensions of deathcare. Her work bridges academic scholarship with policy impact, having served as Special Advisor to the Work and Pensions Select Committee Inquiry into Bereavement Benefits (2016), provided evidence to the Competition and Markets Authority on the funeral industry (2019), and currently leading a UKRI Policy Support Fund study on grave reuse for submission to the UK Law Commission. She employs primarily qualitative methods in her research, often collaborating with interdisciplinary teams across sociology, social policy, and anthropology.

Her recent publications reveal a growing emphasis on institutional approaches to deathcare, home deathcare practices, and the intersection of policy with lived experiences of bereavement. The articles demonstrate consistent focus on UK deathcare systems while increasingly incorporating comparative and international perspectives, particularly regarding public health infrastructure for deathcare.

• Churchill Fellow (2023)
• Outstanding Contribution Award (2024)
• Supervisor of the Year (awarded twice by University of Bath and Students' Union)

Woodthorpe has successfully supervised six PhD students to completion and maintains active grant funding through multiple Economic and Social Research Council projects. Her current research portfolio includes investigations into home deathcare, grave reuse policies, and supporting bereaved people engaged with the coroner service following substance-related deaths. She serves as an external examiner at the University of Sheffield (2022-2026) and has undertaken consultancy work with major organizations including Royal London, Axa SunLife, and Volunteer Cornwall. The Centre for Death and Society, which she co-directs, serves as the primary research team advancing her work in death studies.