Kate Williams
Biographic Data
| ID | 3650556 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kate Williams |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kate |
| FAMILY NAME | Williams |
| SIGNATURE | WILLIAMS K |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Melbourne |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2882-1068 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 49 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 76 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 48 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
How Universities Justify their Worth: Layered Cultural Expression in Strategic Plans
Organisations increasingly operate under conditions of evaluative pluralism, in which they must justify their worth to multiple audiences according to potentially competing criteria. Research universities provide a revealing empirical case, as they face conflicting expectations around advancing knowledge, serving democracy, driving innovation, and contributing to economic growth. This article analyses strategic plans as cultural artefacts through…
A Study of Industry Influence in the Field of Ai Research
In this paper, we explore how AI researchers, situated within university-based research networks, mobilise and resist industry interests. The research question to which this paper is addressed is: how do university-based academics in the field of AI experience and mediate industry influence in their research? We answer this question through semi-structured interviews with research-focused academics (n = 90) affiliated with university-based AI res…
Context is everything: National variation in societal impact assessment
Publicly funded research universities are increasingly required to demonstrate their societal value through detailed reporting mechanisms. In several national contexts, this has taken the form of narrative impact case studies submitted for formal assessment. This paper examines the extent of convergence in constructions of societal impact across case studies from the United Kingdom, Australia, and Hong Kong. Topic modelling was applied to the ful…
Researcher identities and values in the impact agenda: The case of artificial intelligence academics
A major shift in the research sector has been the increased expectation from policymakers and funders that academic research should yield some socioeconomic benefits or ‘impacts’ rather than merely new knowledge. In this paper, we explore the role that impact has in academics’ motivations and values and how impact is being integrated into academics’ core functions of research and education. We do this through in-depth interviews ( n = 60) with sc…
The benefits of being between (many) fields: Mapping the high-dimensional space of AI research
This article considers how the emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) research field is constructed, primarily in university settings. AI research is a site of significant national funding, industry investment, and media interest. As such, for researchers working across the resource-constrained science system, their relationship to the field is significant; legitimisation as an AI researcher can bring material and symbolic rewards. Through intervi…
The influence of public policy and administration expertise on policy: An empirical study
Academic expertise is a key pillar of governance processes around the world. A goal of policy and public sector actors is to draw on research to improve decision making, and correspondingly, a goal of public policy and public administration researchers is to provide relevant expertise. It is not clear, however, to what extent these goals are achieved. This study uses the Overton database to analyse the influence of public policy and administratio…
Public Opinion and China's Strategic Communication: Responses to Coercion and Persuasion
How publics respond to foreign state communications is an important yet relatively unexplored aspect of public diplomacy. In this article we examine the effectiveness of foreign state influence strategies, examining how messaging affects public attitudes to a specific policy issue—in this case, whether China should be permitted to invest in nuclear power infrastructure in the United Kingdom. Deriving a range of arguments from official Chinese new…
Can Self-Understanding Foster Feelings of Professional Responsibility among Planning Students
This qualitative study explores how structured reflection activities can help students critically examine their inner worlds and engage with challenging emotions related to the profession’s history on the path to developing professional expertise. Analysis of students’ reflections assessed levels of critical reflection and engagement with affective learning concepts. Findings indicate that students developed greater self-awareness, honed their se…
The restorative nature of Aymara Indigenous justice in Bolivia
The restorative nature of Aymara Indigenous justice in Bolivia Much current Western scholarship suggests that the modern idea of restorative justice is not totally a recent invention; it shares a common basis with and is similar to Indigenous justice. This article draws on fieldwork concerning Indigenous justice in Bolivia and contends that it has little in common with restorative justice. In much of the Western world, modern justice systems are …
Promising the earth: Forms of capital promised and pursued in Australian-Chinese research collaborations
Science is a space of both collaboration and competition, illustrated by international research collaboration (IRC) and its advantages for individual countries, institutions and scientists. IRC also brings together countries positioned unequally in global epistemic hierarchies. Little is known about how scientists navigate these tensions within IRC. We explore this through a study of Australian–Chinese IRC, drawing on interviews with Australian s…
Measuring Youth Perceptions of Being Known and Loved and Positive Youth Development: Cross-National Findings from Rwanda and El Salvador
A Brand Is a Promise
It was heavy in my hands, that first hymnal. Growing up in rural Iowa, many pew resources were disposable, their tattered edges clinging for dear life to their temporary spine, waiting for their pe
Investigating hybridity in artificial intelligence research
Research in the global field of artificial intelligence is increasingly hybrid in orientation. Researchers are beholden to the requirements of multiple intersecting spheres, such as scholarly, public, and commercial, each with their own language and logic. Relatedly, collaboration across disciplinary, sector and national borders is increasingly expected, or required. Using a dataset of 93,482 artificial intelligence publications, this article ope…
Hybrid knowledge production and evaluation at the World Bank
Before problems can be solved, they must be defined. In global public policy, problems are defined in large part by institutions like the World Bank, whose research shapes our collective understanding of social and economic issues. This article examines how research is produced at the World Bank and deemed to be worthwhile and legitimate. Creating and capturing research on global policy problems requires organizational configurations that operate…
Exploring dignity in the context of displacement – evidence from Rohingyas in Bangladesh and IDPs in Afghanistan
This paper focuses on understanding how displaced people perceive dignity. In doing so, empirical evidence from the displaced Rohingyas from Myanmar, now living in Bangladeshi camps, and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan are contrasted with how dignity is being conceptualised in existing social science literature. In most traditional models or theories of dignity, one’s lived experience is absent, ignored or presumed by the theor…
The Oxford Textbook on Criminology
This book is the essential companion to exploring crime and criminal justice. It provides authoritative yet accessible coverage of all key topics of criminology, with a vibrant, student-focused approach that converts curiosity into critical analysis and students into criminologists. Its full coverage of today’s most pressing criminological issues includes chapters on global criminology (exploring organised crime, drug trafficking, people smugglin…
Exploring the role of the “Big Three” features of effective youth development programs in El Salvador: The sample case of programs of Compassion International
Programs effective in promoting positive youth development (PYD) involve curricular features termed the Big Three: Positive and sustained adult–youth relationships; life-skill-building activities; and youth contribution and leadership opportunities. Data from 610 adolescents (50% female; M age = 16.39 years, SD = 1.83) enrolled in Compassion International-supported programs in El Salvador indicated that scores derived from a youth-report measure …
Evaluating the measure of diverse adolescent spirituality in samples of Mexican and Salvadoran youth
Emotional Regulation in Mothers and Fathers and Relations to Aggression in Hong Kong Preschool Children
This study explored the associations among emotional regulation in mothers and fathers and preschool children's physical and relational aggression using a Hong Kong Chinese sample. This study also explored whether child gender would moderate the association between parental emotional regulation strategies and children's physical and relational aggression. Participants were 168 children aged 4-6 years. Parents reported on their own emotional regul…
Understanding, measuring, and encouraging public policy research impact
Academics undertaking public policy research are committed to tackling interesting questions driven by curiosity, but they generally also want their research to have an impact on government, service delivery, or public debate. Yet our ability to capture the impact of this research is limited because impact is under‐theorised, and current systems of research impact evaluation do not allow for multiple or changing research goals. This article devel…
Credibility in Policy Expertise: The Function of Boundaries Between Research and Policy
As science becomes an increasingly crucial resource for addressing complex challenges in society, extensive demands are placed upon the researchers who produce it. Creating valuable expert knowledge that intervenes in policy or practice requires knowledge brokers to facilitate interactions at the boundary between research and policy. Yet, existing research lacks a compelling account of the ways in which brokerage is performed to gain credibility.…
Adapting the 14-day rule for embryo research to encompass evolving technologies
Strategic positioning: How policy research actors situate their intellectual labour to gain symbolic resources from multiple fields
The process of knowledge production involves negotiating several social worlds, whereby actors engage in positioning and repositioning to situate their intellectual labour and gain symbolic resources. This article considers the strategic positioning of policy research actors using interview and document data. It sets out the ways in which individual and institutional actors negotiate and situate their intellectual practice in order to gain capita…
Exploring Religiousness and Hope: Examining the Roles of Spirituality and Social Connections among Salvadoran Youth
Given the strong link between religiousness and hope, we sought to further understand the relations of these potentially powerful resources for youth living in adversity. Although existing research suggests that religiousness might be associated with adolescent hope via spirituality and social connections, few studies have tested models that integrate both. Thus, as applied psychologists, the aim of this paper was to test a theoretical model in t…
Sniff and Tell: The Feasibility of Using Bio-Detection Dogs as a Mobile Diagnostic Intervention for Asymptomatic Malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa
Bio-Detection Dogs (BDDs) are used in some high-income countries as a diagnostic intervention, yet little is known about their potential in low/middle-income countries with limited diagnostic resources. This exploratory study investigated the opportunities and implications of deploying BDDs as a mobile diagnostic intervention to identify people with asymptomatic malaria, particularly at ports of entry, as an important step to malaria elimination …
Impact of Music Therapy to Promote Positive Parenting and Child Development
The effectiveness of a 10-week group music therapy program for marginalized parents and their children aged 0-5 years was examined. Musical activities were used to promote positive parent-child relationships and children's behavioral, communicative and social development. Participants were 358 parents and children from families facing social disadvantage, young parents or parents of a child with a disability. Significant improvements were found f…
Dissension in public evaluations of the police
The way in which police officers deal with the public has a profound and predominantly negative influence on how the police generally are viewed by the public. Tyler's theory of ‘procedural justice’ argues that if officers act with fairness and respect when interacting with the public, they can win legitimacy. This theory is however one sided; the process of interaction involves not only how the police behave, but also how members of the public p…
Three strategies for attaining legitimacy in policy knowledge: Coherence in identity, process and outcome
At a time when truth and facts are highly contested, understanding how knowledge gains legitimacy is crucial. Creating valuable policy knowledge involves navigating ‘a space between fields’, where actors and ideas from different social worlds come into play. This article outlines a novel set of strategies for attaining legitimacy within this space. Drawing on mixed‐methods analysis of interview and publication data from 12 development research or…
Giving Guilt the Flick”: An Investigation of Mothers’ Talk About Guilt in Relation to Infant Feeding
Manuals offering advice to new parents on the topic of infant feeding have recently begun to attend to the possible implications of pro-breast-feeding discourses for mothers’ subjective experiences, particularly with respect to guilt. In this article, we present a discursive analysis of focus groups with 35 Australian mothers in which we examine how mothers discuss their infant-feeding practices and their related subjective experiences. We focus …
Exploring Religiousness and Hope: Examining the Roles of Spirituality and Social Connections among Salvadoran Youth
Given the strong link between religiousness and hope, we sought to further understand the relations of these potentially powerful resources for youth living in adversity. Although existing research suggests that religiousness might be associated with adolescent hope via spirituality and social connections, few studies have tested models that integrate both. Thus, as applied psychologists, the aim of this paper was to test a theoretical model in t…
Discursive constructions of infant feeding: The dilemma of mothers’ ‘guilt’
Recent feminist and sociological scholarship has problematised the underlying medical assumptions in the established literature on infant feeding by attending to the social and discursive construction of breastfeeding practice. Such work has suggested that the pervasive cultural discourse around breastfeeding as the ‘morally correct’ choice has implications for actual decisions and practices as well as subjective judgements and feelings, particul…
Civilian policing, legitimacy and vigilantism: Findings from three case studies in England and Wales
The growth of civilian policing is indicative of public concerns regarding crime, community safety and the performance of the police, along with the recognition of the need for communities to engage in reducing crime and disorder. This paper examines three examples of ‘civilian policing’, including two ‘Street Watch’ schemes and a private security firm. It explores the legitimisation of civilian policing schemes by the police, along with the exte…
Understanding, measuring, and encouraging public policy research impact
Academics undertaking public policy research are committed to tackling interesting questions driven by curiosity, but they generally also want their research to have an impact on government, service delivery, or public debate. Yet our ability to capture the impact of this research is limited because impact is under‐theorised, and current systems of research impact evaluation do not allow for multiple or changing research goals. This article devel…
Examining the Link Between Funding and Intellectual Interventions Across Universities and Think Tanks: A Theoretical Framework
Policy-oriented expert knowledge is increasingly applied, collaborative and socially accountable, created in a variety of organisations and institutions that display a diversity of funding patterns with a wide range of requirements and expectations. Given the complexities of knowledge production and recent changes in its funding environment (e.g. mode and availability of research funding and evaluation), few existing theoretical elaborations cons…
Similarity and Difference: The Ethnographer, the Subject, and Objectivity
This paper is based on the experiences of two criminological researchers and their reflections of undertaking ethnographic study. We first set out and briefly discuss our methodological standpoint. Then, by examining the differences in our backgrounds and biographies, we begin reflecting on how these influences have impacted upon our motivations for studying and our choice of research areas. We then consider how our biographies have also influenc…
The influence of public policy and administration expertise on policy: An empirical study
Academic expertise is a key pillar of governance processes around the world. A goal of policy and public sector actors is to draw on research to improve decision making, and correspondingly, a goal of public policy and public administration researchers is to provide relevant expertise. It is not clear, however, to what extent these goals are achieved. This study uses the Overton database to analyse the influence of public policy and administratio…
Hybrid knowledge production and evaluation at the World Bank
Before problems can be solved, they must be defined. In global public policy, problems are defined in large part by institutions like the World Bank, whose research shapes our collective understanding of social and economic issues. This article examines how research is produced at the World Bank and deemed to be worthwhile and legitimate. Creating and capturing research on global policy problems requires organizational configurations that operate…
Exploring dignity in the context of displacement – evidence from Rohingyas in Bangladesh and IDPs in Afghanistan
This paper focuses on understanding how displaced people perceive dignity. In doing so, empirical evidence from the displaced Rohingyas from Myanmar, now living in Bangladeshi camps, and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Afghanistan are contrasted with how dignity is being conceptualised in existing social science literature. In most traditional models or theories of dignity, one’s lived experience is absent, ignored or presumed by the theor…
Credibility in Policy Expertise: The Function of Boundaries Between Research and Policy
As science becomes an increasingly crucial resource for addressing complex challenges in society, extensive demands are placed upon the researchers who produce it. Creating valuable expert knowledge that intervenes in policy or practice requires knowledge brokers to facilitate interactions at the boundary between research and policy. Yet, existing research lacks a compelling account of the ways in which brokerage is performed to gain credibility.…
Strategic positioning: How policy research actors situate their intellectual labour to gain symbolic resources from multiple fields
The process of knowledge production involves negotiating several social worlds, whereby actors engage in positioning and repositioning to situate their intellectual labour and gain symbolic resources. This article considers the strategic positioning of policy research actors using interview and document data. It sets out the ways in which individual and institutional actors negotiate and situate their intellectual practice in order to gain capita…
Introducing Management: A development guide for new managers
Introducing Management provides a concise and easy-to-read summary of the principles and practice of management for team leaders and line managers. It defines the scope of the management task and breaks it down to clarify and explain the full range of management responsibilities in the following sections: Managing in Context: an introduction to the management role and responsibilities for the new managerManaging People: how to motivate people, le…
Research note: Across the United States, 85,000 to 144,000 public computing sites
The ProActivetrial protocol – a randomised controlled trial of the efficacy of a family-based, domiciliary intervention programme to increase physical activity among individuals at high risk of diabet…
ProActive is the first efficacy trial of an intervention programme to promote physical activity in a defined high-risk group accessible through primary care. The intervention programme is based on psychological theory and evidence; it introduces and facilitates the use of self-regulatory skills to support behaviour change and maintenance. The trial addresses a range of methodological weaknesses in the field by careful specification and quality as…
Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Police Experiences with the Legitimacy of Street Watch Partnerships
This article describes some of the difficulties experienced by the police in attempting to create and maintain the legitimacy of two local Street Watch police-community partnerships. Using Beetham's (1991) framework of legitimacy for analysis, it is argued that Street Watch schemes do not enjoy inherent legitimacy fundamentally because of their potential for vigilantism, which in turn can threaten to compromise the legitimacy of the police. This …
Civilian policing, legitimacy and vigilantism: Findings from three case studies in England and Wales
The growth of civilian policing is indicative of public concerns regarding crime, community safety and the performance of the police, along with the recognition of the need for communities to engage in reducing crime and disorder. This paper examines three examples of ‘civilian policing’, including two ‘Street Watch’ schemes and a private security firm. It explores the legitimisation of civilian policing schemes by the police, along with the exte…
Similarity and Difference: The Ethnographer, the Subject, and Objectivity
This paper is based on the experiences of two criminological researchers and their reflections of undertaking ethnographic study. We first set out and briefly discuss our methodological standpoint. Then, by examining the differences in our backgrounds and biographies, we begin reflecting on how these influences have impacted upon our motivations for studying and our choice of research areas. We then consider how our biographies have also influenc…
Impact of Music Therapy to Promote Positive Parenting and Child Development
The effectiveness of a 10-week group music therapy program for marginalized parents and their children aged 0-5 years was examined. Musical activities were used to promote positive parent-child relationships and children's behavioral, communicative and social development. Participants were 358 parents and children from families facing social disadvantage, young parents or parents of a child with a disability. Significant improvements were found f…
Scottish Highlanders and Native Americans: Indigenous Education in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
Book Review| October 01 2008 Scottish Highlanders and Native Americans: Indigenous Education in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World By Margaret Connell Szasz. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007. $34.95 paper.) Kate Williams Kate Williams Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ethnohistory (2008) 55 (4): 673–674. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-2008-018 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailT…
Networked Neighbourhoods: The Connected Community in Context
The Addition-Cambridge trial protocol: A cluster – randomised controlled trial of screening for type 2 diabetes and intensive treatment for screen-detected patients
Current Controlled trials ISRCTN86769081
Toward global measurement of the information society: A U.S.-China comparison of national government surveys
To be global, digital and inclusive, we need comparable measures of ICT use around the world. To contribute to this, this research note analyzes what questions the Chinese and the U.S. governments ask in their large, long-running surveys on the topic of computer and internet use. The process and content of these surveys point up agreements, differences, and silences. Based on this, we propose nine basic questions that can be standardized and used…
Protocol for the Addition-Plus study: A randomised controlled trial of an individually-tailored behaviour change intervention among people with recently diagnosed type 2 diabetes under intensive UK ge…
The ADDITION-Plus trial will establish the medium-term effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of adding an externally facilitated intervention tailored to support change in multiple behaviours among intensively-treated individuals with recently diagnosed type 2 diabetes in primary care. Results will inform policy recommendations concerning the management of patients early in the course of diabetes. Findings will also improve understanding of the fa…
Discursive constructions of infant feeding: The dilemma of mothers’ ‘guilt’
Recent feminist and sociological scholarship has problematised the underlying medical assumptions in the established literature on infant feeding by attending to the social and discursive construction of breastfeeding practice. Such work has suggested that the pervasive cultural discourse around breastfeeding as the ‘morally correct’ choice has implications for actual decisions and practices as well as subjective judgements and feelings, particul…
Giving Guilt the Flick”: An Investigation of Mothers’ Talk About Guilt in Relation to Infant Feeding
Manuals offering advice to new parents on the topic of infant feeding have recently begun to attend to the possible implications of pro-breast-feeding discourses for mothers’ subjective experiences, particularly with respect to guilt. In this article, we present a discursive analysis of focus groups with 35 Australian mothers in which we examine how mothers discuss their infant-feeding practices and their related subjective experiences. We focus …
Sex as Crime
Introduction: Problematising sex: introducing sex as crime, Gayle Letherby, Kate Williams, Philip Birch and Maureen Cain Part 1: Sex for Sale Introduction: sex for sale, Kate Williams, Maureen Cain, Philip Birch and Gayle Letherby 1. Reinventing the wheel: contemporary contours of prostitution regulation, Jo Phoenix 2. What's criminal about female indoor sex work? Teela Sanders and Rosie Campbell 3. Intimacy, pleasure and the men who pay for sex,…
Research note: Measuring the globalization of knowledge: The case of community informatics
Freely accessible online, with a wide set of authors and a wider readership, First Monday can be seen as striving for global knowledge on the social aspects of the Internet. In a meta-analysis now underway, we found First Monday to be the third most prolific journal on a particular subject: local communities’ uses of information technology. Our study also sheds some light on what constitutes global knowledge. The data suggests that a synthesis of…
Dissension in public evaluations of the police
The way in which police officers deal with the public has a profound and predominantly negative influence on how the police generally are viewed by the public. Tyler's theory of ‘procedural justice’ argues that if officers act with fairness and respect when interacting with the public, they can win legitimacy. This theory is however one sided; the process of interaction involves not only how the police behave, but also how members of the public p…
Protocol for Get Moving: A randomised controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of three minimal contact interventions to promote fitness and physical activity in working adults
ISRCTN31844443. Registered 18 June 2010
Criminology
Criminology is a core, introductory textbook on the field of crime and criminology. It starts by looking at what crime is and the theories that try to explain it. It then considers society's response to crime. It shows how to carry out independent research and plan first steps in a career. The critical, applied approach is emphasized through some of the many features that are integrated throughout the book. These include conversations with authen…
They say God punishes people with HIV’: Experiences of stigma and discrimination among adults with HIV in Dili, Timor-Leste
Little is known about the experiences of people with HIV in the small island nation of Timor-Leste. This study explored the HIV-related stigma experiences of adults aged between 18 and 40 living with HIV in Dili, Timor-Leste. Participants were interviewed on topics related to living with HIV, both as key informants describing the experience of others with HIV known to them, and also with respect to their own personal experiences. Findings suggest…
Examining the Link Between Funding and Intellectual Interventions Across Universities and Think Tanks: A Theoretical Framework
Policy-oriented expert knowledge is increasingly applied, collaborative and socially accountable, created in a variety of organisations and institutions that display a diversity of funding patterns with a wide range of requirements and expectations. Given the complexities of knowledge production and recent changes in its funding environment (e.g. mode and availability of research funding and evaluation), few existing theoretical elaborations cons…
Organisations and Policy-Relevant Knowledge Production
Three strategies for attaining legitimacy in policy knowledge: Coherence in identity, process and outcome
At a time when truth and facts are highly contested, understanding how knowledge gains legitimacy is crucial. Creating valuable policy knowledge involves navigating ‘a space between fields’, where actors and ideas from different social worlds come into play. This article outlines a novel set of strategies for attaining legitimacy within this space. Drawing on mixed‐methods analysis of interview and publication data from 12 development research or…
Sniff and Tell: The Feasibility of Using Bio-Detection Dogs as a Mobile Diagnostic Intervention for Asymptomatic Malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa
Bio-Detection Dogs (BDDs) are used in some high-income countries as a diagnostic intervention, yet little is known about their potential in low/middle-income countries with limited diagnostic resources. This exploratory study investigated the opportunities and implications of deploying BDDs as a mobile diagnostic intervention to identify people with asymptomatic malaria, particularly at ports of entry, as an important step to malaria elimination …
Gender equality in science, medicine, and global health: Where are we at and why does it matter?
Sociology (25 works) · Political science (24 works) · Psychology (19 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Public relations (13 works) · Social science (12 works) · Business (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Economics (9 works)