Dr Katherine Keenan

Dr Katherine Keenan

Senior Lecturer in Demography/Population Geography

Senior Lecturer; Deputy Director (Training) of the Scottish Graduate School for Social Science

Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 3951
Email
Katherine.Keenan@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Biography

I have a multidisciplinary background in anthropology, demography, and epidemiology. After a spell working in technology, I completed an MSc Demography and Health and PhD in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). I went on work as a postdoc at both LSHTM and LSE before joining St Andrews as a Lecturer in July 2017.

I am a visiting researcher at the Centre for Fertility and Health (Oslo), and a Faculty member of the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science (MPIDR-PHDS). Since 2023 I am a visiting researcher at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo (FGV), Brazil, and Associate Researcher at the Antimicrobial Resistance Institute of Sao Paulo. 

From April 2024 I am serving as Deputy Director (Training) for the Scottish Graduate School for Social Science, seconded 50% of my time to the University of Edinburgh.

Teaching

I help deliver the core quantitative methods teaching for undergraduate geography and sustainable development students in St Andrews, and also deliver research-led teaching in demography, population, health inequalities and life course studies. 

From 2024 I am working as the Deputy Director (training) for the Scottish Graduate School for Social Science, which works to develop core and specialist training for social science postgraduate students across Scottish universities. 

Research areas

My research interests are in the complex determinants of population health, and I currently lead projects on the social dimensions of antimicrobial resistance and multimorbidity. I primarily use quantitative methods, but am an experienced mixed-methods researcher. 

My current projects:

  • Antimicrobial Resistance in East Africa- I was the Co-I and analysis lead on the MRC-funded HATUA consortium (2018-21) and the NIHR-funded CARE project (2020-23), and involved in several impact-related activities and PhD projects on this topic. 
  • Social burden of AMR in Brazil- I am an associate researcher with the Antimicrobial Resistance Institute of Sao Paulo, a FAPESP-funded Institute of Research, Diffusion and Innovation. There I work on social dimensions of AMR. 
  • Integenerational Continuities in Family Building Behaviours and Inequality: I am a Co-I on the ESRC-funded Connecting Generations Centre. 
  • Multimorbidity trajectories and their determinants in Scotland: I am the PI of a data linkage project in Scotland, with partners in Edinburgh and St Andrews. 
  • Social Determinants of Miscarriage- I am collaborating on an ERC funded Starting Grant (led by Heini Vaisenen at INED), which uses Scottish adminstrative data to better understand social dimensions of miscarriage. 

PhD supervision

  • Sepideh Benvari
  • Madeleine Clarkson
  • Victor Emmanuel
  • Thu Nguyen
  • Edward Pomeroy
  • Ruhamah Thejus

Selected publications

 

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