Professor Kathryn (Kate) Henne is the Director of the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet). She earned her PhD in Criminology, Law and Society (with emphases in Critical Theory and Feminist Studies and a specialisation in Anthropologies of Medicine, Science and Technology) from the University of California, Irvine. Before commencing as RegNet’s Director, she held the Canada Research Chair in Biogovernance, Law and Society at the University of Waterloo and an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award at RegNet.

Kate Henne’s research is concerned with the interface between inequality, technoscience and regulation. She has published widely on topics related to biometric surveillance, technologies of policing, regulatory science and the governance of human enhancement and physical wellbeing.

Her ongoing work encompasses two projects. The first illuminates how inequality mediates regulatory responses to traumatic brain injury, particularly how the emphasis on athletes and military personnel often overshadows the experiences of other affected groups, such as survivors of partner-inflicted violence. The second program of research is a multi-sited study of how biometric technologies, predictive algorithms and risk assessment models are used as regulatory tools in the context of social assistance delivery. It asks: how are these different modes of authentication and verification informing practices and experiences of regulation, especially among marginalised populations? What are the outcomes and implications?

Research interests

crime, law and society; critical health studies; embodiment; race, gender and sexuality; regulation and governance; science and technology studies; sociology of deviance; surveillance