Research Areas

Department Research Areas

• Genetics

Catherine’s first degree was in Philosophy from Dundee University. She obtained a Masters in Philosophy from Liverpool University in 1999. She then undertook an ESRC PhD Case Studentship at the University of Manchester in the Centre for Census and Survey Research, in Sociology, she was jointly supervised from the Office for National Statistics. The doctoral research was on the Role of Privacy and Confidentiality in the work of National Statistical Institutes. Catherine also spent two periods of research, as a Marie-Curie doctoral fellow at the Department of Information Management of Tilburg University; here she explored the developments in technologies for analysing data with and their implications for legal and ethical frameworks for data protection. Catherine completed her doctorate in 2004.

In 2003 Catherine became a research fellow on the ESRC funded Data-Sharing and Privacy project based at Edinburgh University. This project aimed to look at how personal information was shared across organisational boundaries by public sector organisations working in the areas of health and crime prevention. In 2005 she took up a post at ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum at Edinburgh University. Here she had responsibility for the work program on the Evaluation of Genetic services, exploring how methods of assessing health technologies for funding will interact with Genetic services as they increasingly come on stream. At Ethox, Catherine will work on the project Governance of Genetic Databases. As part of an interdisciplinary team she will coordinate and carry out interviews with clinicians, scientists and researchers who use and manage genetic databases.