Dr Katharine Gillett

Katharine Gillett is a Level B Lecturer in Midwifery and Early Career Researcher who has excelled in her teaching and research since commencing at the University of Newcastle in 2024. Katharine received an Excellence Award for an Outstanding Contribution to Teaching and Learning from the School of Nursing and Midwifery in 2024 after she coordinated several courses throughout the year and received consistent teaching scores in the Course Experience Survey of >4.8/5. 

Katharine’s knowledge and skills in teaching and learning in midwifery are well founded in her extensive experience as a practicing midwife and in arts-based education. Katharine has implemented a number of scholarly teaching activities into her courses including the introduction of a grief memoir to clinical education around neonatal loss; embedding creative exercises into the complex labour and birth courses to promote self-awareness and deep reflection; and introducing weekly segments titled Women’s Voices and Midwives’ Voices in order to provide education around humanised care in complex clinical situations.

Katharine also strives to provide an exceptional experience in the simulated learning environment and her ability to create a safe and welcoming space to learn clinical skills is evidenced by this qualitative comment from the Course Experience Survey:
  
“Her passion and enthusiasm for midwifery and teaching. Katharine is always approachable and goes the extra mile to ensure that we are receiving the best education possible. I am very grateful that I have the opportunity to learn from Katharine. The best teacher I have had in this degree to date.”
   
Katharine's research interests lie in the dynamic transdisciplinary field of Health Humanities. In 2024, Katharine was an invited speaker to The University of Oxford Centre for Life Writing for a symposium titled Life writing at the edges of life – Birth, death, and dying and presented to medical students at Imperial College London with a session titled Health humanities in clinical education. Katharine also wrote and led a workshop for clinical educators at the Trans-Tasman Midwifery Education Consortium on Using poetry as a means of deep reflection in health and presented Learning kindness through literature at an NHS Scotland conference.
 
More locally, Katharine is a founding member of the Humanising birth Symposium a Cross-College Research Alliance with the College of Human and Social Futures and has presented at the Cross College Research Symposium on Humanising birth: Understanding qualified and student midwives' aspirations, experiences and professional capacities. She is currently supervising two doctoral students whose topics are related to Humanising birth. Katharine is an editor on the 3rd edition of Australian Midwifery Stories (2023) and her research interests have culminated in an upward trajectory of publications in high quality journals.

Katharine was an invited speaker at the Newcastle Writers’ Festival where she chaired a panel on motherhood and mental health and in 2025, she will present at the International Labour and Birth Research Conference in the UK on Educational perspectives on humanising birth.

Katharine has successfully secured funding from the University of Waikato and the University of Newcastle for a project titled Creative Expression and Indigenous Storytelling in Midwifery Education - A Bi-National Collaboration to the value of $14997, which is due to commence in 2025.
 
Katharine is a passionate teacher and midwife who believes that student midwives’ capacity and responsibility surrounding humanised birth are now essential elements education and practice.