Kate Joynes-Burgess

Kate is a Wellcome Trust scholar who joined NDPH as a DPhil student in 2019 where she is researching 'infectious content' on social media and its effect on vaccine confidence among UK parents, under the supervision of Associate Professors Nina Hallowell and Matthew Snape. Kate returns to academia after more than 15 years in business, most recently as European managing director of digital innovation at global communications agency, Burson Cohn & Wolfe, which she continues to support as a senior strategic advisor. 

Building her expertise in digital health, Kate has previously led research into the impact of online misinformation upon vaccine hesitancy on behalf of the World Health Organization, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and UNICEF as part of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI). Through her doctoral studies, Kate is looking forward to deepening her knowledge and experience in this field through in-depth quantitative and qualitative research, and acquiring new skills along the way from topic modelling to statistics.  

Seeking to support the contribution of technology for good, Kate serves as a business ambassador for charity, the Virtual Doctors, which leverages mobile tech to save lives in rural Zambia.