Professor Kate Dashper

Professor Kate Dashper is the Director of Research Degrees in the School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management. Her research applies a critical sociological lens to examine practices of work and leisure, particularly focusing on gender issues and interspecies encounters.

Kate’s work combines expertise in gender studies and human-animal studies. Her PhD (Keele University), sponsored by the journal Gender, Work and Organization, was a study of gender relations within the mixed-sex context of equestrian sport. Her research has since developed her interest in gender and diversity, considering how more-than-human perspectives can inform understanding of the complexities of multispecies worlds.

Kate is an internationally recognised researcher for her work in human-animal studies. Through her research on equestrian sport and leisure, Kate examines how humans and nonhumans work and play together, and the interspecies relationships that can develop through joint action and interaction. Her research considers the potential contributions that multispecies perspectives can make to understanding events, tourism and hospitality practices and organisations. She is author of the 2017 monograph Human-animal Relationships in Equestrian Sport and Leisure (Routledge) and co-editor of the first book on multispecies events, Humans, horses and Event Management (CABI, 2021).

Kate’s other main area of expertise is gender, and she has conducted research and consultancy projects within both the events and equestrian industries, evaluating gender equality initiatives in organisations and exploring the gendered experiences of women and men within professional and leisure contexts. She is editor of Sport, Gender and Mega-events (Emerald, 2021).

Kate is Director of Research Degrees in the School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management and leads the School’s postgraduate research development programme. She also teaches human resource management at undergraduate level, and supervises undergraduate and postgraduate research projects.
She is currently supervising PhD students researching a variety of issues in events, tourism and hospitality. She welcomes applications in relation to:

• Gender and events, tourism and hospitality
• Emotional and aesthetic labour in events, tourism and hospitality organisations
• Organisational behaviour in events, tourism and hospitality
• Multispecies perspectives on events, tourism and hospitality
• Animals in tourism
• Nature and the outdoors and events, tourism and hospitality