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, where she was also a Fellow of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, 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 surveillance and technologies of policing, gender regulation, social protection regimes, biomedicalisation and the governance of human enhancement and physical wellbeing.

Her ongoing work encompasses three 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 technologies, such as biometrics, predictive algorithms and risk assessment models, are used as regulatory tools in the context of social assistance delivery. It asks: how are they informing practices and experiences of regulation, especially for those subject to multiple forms of marginalisation, and what are their implications? The third is a collaborative multi-country exploration of how individuals approach and navigate sociotechnical systems in everyday life during times of major disruption and crisis.

Research interests

• Crime
• Law and society
• Critical health studies
• Inequality and social justice
• Lived experiences of regulation and governance
• Science and technology studies
• Surveillance