Kate Pickett
““Profound... brave... transformative...””
© David Linford
Kate Pickett OBE FRSA FFPH FAcSS is Professor of Epidemiology at the University of York, where she leads the Public Health & Society Research Group, the York Cost of Living Research Group and the Born in Bradford Centre for Social Change. She is also academic co-director of Health Equity North. She was a UK NIHR Career Scientist from 2007-2012 and is a Fellow of the RSA, the UK Faculty of Public Health and the British Academy of Social Sciences. A social epidemiologist, Kate’s research and writing focus on the wider determinants of health and inequalities in wellbeing.
Kate is co-author, with Richard Wilkinson, of the bestselling and award winning The Spirit Level (2009) and The Inner Level (2018). Described by Penguin as ‘the most influential and talked-about book on society in the last decade’, The Spirit Level won the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas Book Prize and was the 2012 Publication of the Year of the Political Studies Association. The New Statesman listed it in the Top Ten Books of the Decade, and the Guardian listed it among the 100 most influential books of the century.
Kate writes a column for Social Europe and has written close to 400 reports, journal articles, book chapters, editorials and commentaries, including for the Guardian, Independent, Nature, New Scientist, New Statesman, New York Times, Yorkshire Post, Observer, and the World Economic Forum Agenda.
She was awarded a 2013 Silver Rose Award from Solidar for championing equality, the 2014 Charles Cully Medal of the Irish Cancer Society, the 2015 Alexander Morison Medal from the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and in 2023 received an OBE for services to societal equality.
Kate is a Trustee of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance, co-founder and patron of The Equality Trust and a full member of the Club of Rome.
Kate attended a comprehensive school, The Ecclesbourne School, in Derbyshire, then studied Archaeology & Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, focusing on biological anthropology. She lived for 16 years in the USA, where she received a Master’s in Nutritional Sciences from Cornell University, and a PhD in Epidemiology from University of California, Berkeley. After four years as an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago, she returned to the UK.
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