Kate's primary research interests are in life narrative studies: the ways in which people tell stories about their lives and the lives of others and the literatures and technologies they use to record these life stories. She is the author of Contesting Childhood: Autobiography, Trauma and Memory (Rutgers, 2010) and the co-author (with Anna Poletti) of Life Narratives and Youth Cultures: Representation, Agency and Participation (Palgrave, 2016) and co-editor (with Gillian Whitlock) of Trauma Texts (Routledge, 2009) and (with Kylie Cardell) Telling Tales: Autobiographies of Childhood and Youth (Routledge, 2015). With Dr Ashley Barnwell, she is the co-editor of the forthcoming Research Methods for Auto/Biography Studies (Routledge, 2019).

Kate's allied research interests include: studies in childhood and youth, memory and trauma studies. Kate is a strong advocate of research-led teaching and teaching-led research and was a co-colloborator in the OLT-funded project: "Building Reading Resilience: Developing a Skill-Based Approach to Literary Studies" (with Tully Barnett, Rosanne Kennedy, Anna Poletti and Jude Seaboyer).

Kate leads the Life Narrative Research Group at Flinders University.

Kate is the Head of the steering committee for the International Auto/Biography Association Asia-Pacific chapter, and is a member of the Executive Committee of IABA (World).

• Life writing/narrative (across various media)
• Narratives of childhood
• The sociology of childhood/youth
• Trauma studies
• Memory studies
• Literature and social justice
• Contemporary fiction
• Authorship
• Readers
• Literary/cultural theory
• Creative writing
• Graphic novels/memoirs
• Australian literature/studies
• Pedagogy