Research Associate

Kate is a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. When in Canada, she is based in the spatial ecology lab of the University of Toronto’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Kate an interdisciplinary scientist broadly interested in relationships between people and the landscapes they manage. Her work focuses on feedbacks among land-use, biodiversity, and human well-being; and on the role of human social and cultural organization in structuring patterns of biodiversity. She is also interested in understanding broad-scale patterns in human linguistic and cultural diversity, and the forces that foster or constrain diversity in languages and human social groups. Kate earned her PhD at the University of British Columbia, and her MSc through the joint McGill University–Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute NEO program.