Dr Kate Herrity

Honorary Fellow

BSc Criminology and Sociology, MSc Criminology, Criminal Justice and Research Methods, PhD Criminology

Kate completed her PhD in 2019 winning a studentship at the University of Leicester, it’s monograph – Sound, Order and Survival in Prison - won the British Society of Criminology Annual Book prize in 2024. Following a short stint as module leader in the Criminology division, De Montfort University, she won the Mellon-Kings Research Fellowship in Punishment and remained at King’s College, University of Cambridge until 2025. 

Passionate about sharing criminological ideas accessibly, Kate recently featured in an episode of Thinking Allowed on Radio 4 and has curated sensorycriminology.com since 2019. Sensory Criminology was designed to accompany the co-edited collection Sensory Penalities (2019) a book which set out to explore the senses in spaces and places of confinement while considering the implications of this for our understanding. Working at the cross sections and meeting places of criminology and other fields and disciplines she has enduring interests in sensory methods, sociology of music and how these can deepen our understanding of criminological issues. The co-edited volume Sound and Detention, created with colleagues in musicology and sound studies explores critical listening at the junctions of criminal justice, sound and music. The book is accompanied by an audio archive which aims to evolve the way we engage with media as well as reconfiguring the ‘academic’ audience. The co-edited Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Criminology similarly seeks to expand the perimeters of criminology by foregrounding how we taste, smell, feel, and sense the criminological.