Dr Kate Smith of our Coast-R Network team was the proud recipient of the Rising Star category of the Women in Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (WiFCERM) Awards 2025 at last night’s annual Flood & Coast conference dinner.
The Rising Star Award is given to an individual in the earlier stages of their career in flood and coastal erosion risk management, who has proactively influenced and promoted gender equality, diversity and inclusion, making a positive and noticeable difference within their own organisation and beyond.
Kate’s interdisciplinary research interests centre around the interactions between water, people, landscape and identity, and in participatory methodologies and thematic analysis. She currently combines work on the UK Coast-R Network alongside teaching on the University of Hull’s MSc in Flood Risk Management.
She was a key member of the University of Hull’s Risky Cities team, helping to understand the impact of large-scale public art interventions on people’s engagement with action for climate empowerment, including a collaboration with the National Youth Theatre, which was staged at COP26.
Kate previously worked within Hull’s Flood Innovation Centre, developing novel and creative ways to engage diverse publics with flood resilience and climate change adaptation. She also took a key role in nationally significant research on using mobile technologies for flood warnings, using social value as a way of evaluating flood resilience innovation, and understanding.
The Flood and Coast dinner celebrates the people, teams, and projects driving progress in flood and coastal risk management and features the Women in FCERM awards, alongside the CIWEM Spotlight Awards and the Environment Agency Flood and Coast Excellence Awards.
Kate recorded this thank you message, marking her receipt of the award:
