Kate Oakley is Professor of Cultural Policy at the University of Leeds. Her research interests include the politics of cultural policy, work in the cultural industries, and regional development.
Following a career as a journalist, Kate worked for a number of years in information society policy. This included researching management consultancy as a knowledge-based industry, while a Research Fellow at Manchester Business School and Head of the Information & Communications Policy Group at the Policy Studies Institute. This covered research on intellectual property, the commercialisation of public sector information, and the growth of information work and workers.
In 1997, she became a self-employed consultant/researcher working for a variety of public agencies, think tanks and research organisations. In this role, having worked on a large number of localised creative industry strategies, Kate developed an influential policy-informed critique of creative industries.
Research Interests
Politics of cultural and media policy
Cultural labour and labour markets
Worker organization in the cultural industries
Cultural industries and place: cities, regions and neighbourhoods
Culture and creative industries | 
