Kate Lawson

Associate Professor

Kate Lawson PhD, Toronto
MA, Toronto
BA, Toronto

Extension: 43965
Office: HH 264
Email: klawson@uwaterloo.ca

Biography

I grew up in Nova Scotia and Ontario, and completed my PhD at the University of Toronto in 1988. I joined Waterloo’s English Department in 2002, after spending six years on limited-term contracts at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Toronto and eight years in a tenure-stream appointment at the University of Northern British Columbia.

My research and graduate teaching focus on mid-nineteenth-century British fiction. From my PhD dissertation on Charlotte Brontë and religion, to my co-authored book on representations of middle-class domestic violence, to my current research on the three Brontë sisters, I am interested in tracing the articulation of the Victorian period’s characteristic anxieties and preoccupations—political, economic, psychological, and familial.

I served as Chair of the Department of English from 2015-2018, as Associate Chair, Undergraduate Studies, from 2008-2011, and on the UW Senate from 2010-12. For the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA), I was President (2013-15), Chair of the Board (2017-2020), and member-at-large (2020- ). I am particularly interested in issues of government funding policy, precarious academic labour, and fair employment practices.