Kate is an academic and policy expert focusing on India's international relations and security in the Indian Ocean and Indo-Pacific. She obtained a PhD in Politics and International Relations from the Australian National University in 2011. For the past 14 years Kate has been Associate Professor in the International Relations of Southeast Asia at the School of Global and Area Studies and the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford.

She is currently Director of the Contemporary South Asian Studies Programme.  She convenes and teaches the MSc/MPhil option on the International Relations of South Asia and supervises DPhil students.

Her research interests centre on the social mobility of states in world politics, in particular examining India's role and identity as a rising power, its strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and Indian Ocean security and nuclear politics in South Asia.  Her current research interests also include the four Quad nations—Australia, Japan, India, and the United States.

Kate worked for a year with the Indian Ocean Commission, headquartered in Mauritius and, more recently, she had a short secondment as Principal Research Analyst for India at the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. She has also delivered expert testimony to UK parliamentary inquiries and engages across Whitehall and beyond on the UK's policy towards India.