Dr Kate McNicholas Smith

Kate has a background in sociology, media and cultural studies and gender and sexuality studies. Her research is concerned with queer, feminist engagements with popular culture and celebrity, with a particular focus on television. Recent research explores LGBTQ+ lives and representations; queer fan cultures; social media; gender, sexuality and celebrity; television and society/social change.

Kate holds a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies (2006, Royal Holloway, University of London), an MA in Gender and Women's Studies and English (2008, Lancaster University), and an MA in Sociological Research (2010, Lancaster University). Her PhD research (2014, Lancaster University) combined television studies, fan studies, feminist and queer theory.

Between 2011 and 2017, Kate taught at Lancaster University across Gender Studies, Media Studies and Sociology. Joining the University of Westminster in 2018, Kate teaches television and media theory on BA Television Production, BA Film and MA Film, Television and Moving Image, specialising in teaching on media and representation; contemporary television culture; and audiences. 

In 2020, Kate's book Lesbians On Television: New Queer Visibility and The Lesbian Normal was published by Intellect. The twenty-first century has seen LGBTQ+ rights emerge at the forefront of public discourse and national politics in ways that would once have been hard to imagine. Focusing on the small screens of Europe and North America, Lesbians on Television maps the contemporary shifts in lesbian visibility within popular media and, from this, extracts a figure of the new 'lesbian normal' that both helps and hinders those it represents. This book offers a unique and layered account of the complex dynamics in the modern moment of social change, drawing together critical social and cultural theory as well empirical research, which includes interviews and multi-platform media analyses. 

Lesbians on Television is available Open Access here.

Kate's current research has two central strands: 

- The politics of televisual nostalgia and  

- Contemporary representations, rights and social shifts around queer/LGBTQ+ families. 

Kate would welcome PhD applications on topic including: LGBTQ+ representation/queer media; gender and media; media and social issues/change; audiences/fandoms; social media and activism/social change; youth media; television studies on themes including: nostalgia; youthification; representation; EDI on and off screen. 

Kate's research explores various themes of gender, sexuality, society and popular culture, with a particular focus on television. 

Publications:

McNicholas Smith, Kate (2020) Lesbians On Television: New Queer Visibility and The Lesbian Normal. Bristol: Intellect https://www.intellectbooks.com/lesbians-on-television

McNicholas Smith, Kate (2019) ‘Time for all of us to Walk into the Sunshine Together’: Glee, the same-sex wedding spectacle and the imagining of queer futures’ in Something Old, Something New: the Wedding Spectacle Across Contemporary Cultures, Helen Wood, Melanie Kennedy & Jilly Kay (eds.) London: Routledge. 

McNicholas Smith, Kate. (2017) ‘Sexualisation or the Queer Feminist Provocations of Miley Cyrus’. FeministTheory 18(3): 281-298 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1464700117721880 

McNicholas Smith, Kate & Imogen Tyler (2017) ‘Lesbian Brides: Post-Queer Popular Culture’. Feminist Media Studies. 17 (3): 315-331. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2017.1282883 

McNicholas Smith, Kate (2016) ‘Love Trumps Hate? LGBTQ in the Trump Era’. The Sociological Review: https://www.thesociologicalreview.com/blog/love-trumps-hate-lgbtq-in-the-trump-era.html      

McNicholas Smith, Kate (2016) Book review: ‘Ethereal Queer: Television, Historicity, Desire. Amy Villarejo’. Feminist Theory. 17 (1): 131-132.

McNicholas Smith, Kate (2016) Book review: ‘Reality TV, June Deery’. Sociological Review. 64 (1): 204-206.    

For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.