Kate Lister

Dr Kate Lister is a historian, author, lecturer, and intellectually slutty. She spends most of her time peeping up the skirts of history and posting what she finds to 125,000 followers on Twitter and to the online research project, Whores of Yore. Kate is the sole curator of Whores of Yore, a public engagement project that works to make research on sexuality and the history of sex work freely accessible. Whores of Yore features Kate’s research as well as articles from academics, sex workers, activists, artists, therapists and historians, in order to break down hierarchies and join up conversations around sexuality.

Lister’s book, A Curious History of Sex (based on the whores of yore project), is being published next year with the Crowdfunded publisher, Unbound. The project has raised over £20,000 in one month and Kate is splitting the profits with Basis Sex Work Project in Leeds, an organisation that supports people across the sex industry.

Lister is also a columnist for inews where she writes about the history of sex, covering such diverse subjects as medieval impotence tests and the forgotten custom of baking bread with your genitals. As well as her university work, Kate regularly gives talks on the history of sex at events such as the Secret Garden Party, Eroticon, Sexpression, the Edinburgh Fringe festival and the Cheltenham Literature Festival.

Lister has also published in the field of Victorian studies, film studies, and gender studies, and has several publications in the field of gender and representations of sexual violence in historical dramas forthcoming.