I have a PhD by Practice Research in Drama, Theatre and Production Arts from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, funded by the Guildhall Arts & Health Studentship. My doctoral research scrutinised hormonal contraception through autoethnographic cabaret, taking a queer feminist, health activist stance, emphasising the value of embodied knowledge in pill-taking narratives. The practice outputs of this work were First Bite and Side FX. My practice research more broadly explores performances of medical experience, comedy and the dynamics between audience and performer.  I recently co-authored a chapter on pill performances in the Routledge Companion to Performance and Medicine, a solo article in the BMJ Health Humanities entitled ‘The Double Life of The Pill: Towards a Cabaret Methodology for Contraceptive Research’, and I am working on a co-authored chapter in Routledge’s Contemporary Feminisms in Musical Theatre on gender and casting in Operation Mincemeat, in addition to which I regularly present at the Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) national conference. I am developing a new project using clowning and folk music to explore neurodivergent women’s relationships with alcohol.​​

 

PUBLICATIONS

(Forthcoming) Gow, S. and Paterson, K. ‘God That’s Brilliant: Casting Across Genders in Operation Mincemeat’, in Contemporary Feminisms in Musical Theatre (London: Routledge).

Paterson, K. (2025) ‘Double life of the pill: towards a cabaret methodology for contraceptive research’. BMJ Medical Humanities doi: 10.1136/medhum-2024-013101 

Mermikides, A. and Paterson, K. (2024) ‘Performing the pill: Contemporary feminist performance exploring the side effects of hormonal contraception’ in The Routledge Companion to Performance and Medicine (London: Routledge).​

 

CONFERENCE PAPERS

Second Drink Sensation: Alcohol, ADHD and Autoethnographic Cabaret, TaPRA Conference, University of Warwick, 28th August 2025

Gow, S. and Paterson, K. God That’s Brilliant: Casting Across Genders in Operation Mincemeat, Representing Histories: The Past in/of Musical Theatre, Goldsmiths, University of London, 29th September 2024,

The Greatest Experiment: Playing with Pills in the Onstage Laboratory, TaPRA Conference, University of Northumbria, 4th September 2024

Consent is Sexy and So are Stickers, TaPRA Conference, University of Leeds, 30th August 2023

The Double Life of The Pill, Material Selves: Health Gender and Performance Symposium, UCL Institute of Advanced Studies 16th June 2022

Whose truth on whose terms? Unpacking verbatim practices in arts and health research. TaPRA Postgraduate Symposium 25th June 2021

Lived vs learned: performing the boundaries and bodies of medical knowledge. Intersections at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama 14th May 2021