Katie holds a PhD by Practice Research from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Her doctoral research Side FX scrutinised hormonal contraception through autoethnographic cabaret, taking a queer feminist, health activist stance, emphasising the value of embodied knowledge in pill-taking narratives, and her practice research explores performances of medical experience, comedy and the dynamics between audience and performer.
Her performance work spanning cabaret, comedy, theatre, and live art has been seen at the Barbican, Pleasance, Theatre503, Museum of Comedy, VAULT Festival, Cockpit Theatre, Theatre Deli, Camden People’s Theatre, Edinburgh Fringe, Q Theatre Auckland, Waitress and Maiden Speech Festivals. She continues to work as a freelance actor and singer, having trained at Mountview following a BA in Drama and Theatre Arts at the University of Birmingham.
As Senior Tutor, Postgraduate Training, Katie leads modules in Creative Practice Research and teaches a range of academic and vocational skills across all Mountview’s MA/MFA programmes with an emphasis on self-led practice, dramaturgy and critical theory. She has taught and facilitated in a range of educational and community settings, including Guildhall, Oxford School of Drama, University of Kingston, Kings College London, Young Actors Theatre Islington, Code Blue, Helen Bamber Foundation, Putney Methodist Church and Forest School Camps. A neurodivergent scholar, Katie is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and passionate about developing more inclusive and accessible pedagogies in the conservatoire.
PUBLICATIONS
(Forthcoming) Gow, S. and Paterson, K. ‘God That’s Brilliant: Casting Across Genders in Operation Mincemeat’, in Contemporary Feminisms in Musical Theatre (London: Routledge).
Paterson, K. (2025) ‘Double life of the pill: towards a cabaret methodology for contraceptive research’. BMJ Medical Humanities doi: 10.1136/medhum-2024-013101
Mermikides, A. and Paterson, K. (2024) ‘Performing the pill: Contemporary feminist performance exploring the side effects of hormonal contraception’ in The Routledge Companion to Performance and Medicine (London: Routledge).
