Katherine Brookfield

Research Database

Katherine's research focuses on quality of life and the various factors that can promote, or impede, a ‘good’ quality of life. Orientated by this concern, she has completed research on such matters as aids and barriers to social and political participation and the benefits these activities can provide, age-friendly housing and built environments, supportive environments for stroke survivors, the social, economic and environmental outputs of planning policy and economic development strategies, collaborative planning and nature-health relations in deprived communities. Her research often employs mixed qualitative methods such as interviews, focus groups, observation and documentary research, and draws upon primary and secondary data. She has worked on projects funded by a range of organisations including the Economic and Social Research Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Planning Exchange Foundation and the National Institute for Health Research. Her research is published in various international journals. She has a BA (Hons) in Politics (First Class), a Masters in Planning, and a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering. She has held posts at the Universities of Southampton, Sheffield and Edinburgh and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Prior to her roles in academia, Katherine held research and consultancy positions in the built environment and real estate sectors where she analysed housing markets, produced urban renewal action plans and provided evidence-based advice to developers and investors.

Katherine teaches across the first, second and third year of the undergraduate Human Geography and Environment degree in the Environment and Geography Department. She leads and contributes to modules on: environmental psychology, sustainable tourism and transport, human geography’s sub-disciplines, production and consumption geographies and qualitative research methods. She also supervises undergraduate dissertation students and advises doctoral students. She is able to supervise PhD students with interests in: planning and the built environment, age-friendly housing and built environments, nature-health relations.