Professor Kate Brown

Profile

Areas of expertise

• Care and control of vulnerable people
• The governance of vulnerability
• Vulnerability and policing

My research explores how vulnerability is lived, governed and understood, with a focus on the lived experiences of those considered the most vulnerable. I am especially interested in how welfare and criminal justice interventions operate to shape situations of vulnerability where people are socially marginalised. I am Co-Director of the ESRC Vulnerability and Policing Futures Research Centre, a £10 million investment which commenced May 2022, working with colleagues and partners to improve service provision for vulnerable people through research.

Before working as an academic I worked in the voluntary sector for nearly ten years in services for vulnerable groups. First as a support worker for sex workers and sexually exploited young women, then in policy/participation work on child sexual exploitation (CSE), moving on to work as a manager in drugs services and a domestic abuse refuge. What I learned in practice about punitive and exclusionary responses to vulnerability remains central in my research.

For fifteen years I was a Trustee/Chair of Trustees for Basis Yorkshire, an award-winning third sector support and advocacy project for sex workers and sexually exploited young people. I have an interest in co-production with those deemed vulnerable and in 2016 worked with young people who had experienced sexual exploitation to make an animation and set of resources about moving on from CSE (a partnership with Basis Yorkshire).

More recently I have worked on policing vulnerability, including a recent study evaluating the role of Sex Work Liaison Officers (SWLOs); working with police, sex workers and sex work support services to develop best practice models in these roles. I work on VPRC’s research studies on county lines, views on vulnerability, homelessness and modern slavery as well as co-leading the Centre’s work and supervising Centre PhDs.