Katherine (Kate) McNally is a sixth year PhD candidate in the Yale anthropology department and a 2023-2024 Pedagogy Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration. Originally from Deep River, Connecticut, she graduated from Bates College in 2017 with a BA in anthropology and a concentration in North Atlantic studies.
Her research is centered on inequality and environmental change in rural North America, working primarily with small predominantly settler fishing communities in Newfoundland and Labrador. In her dissertation, she thinks about the colonial forms of dispossession and transatlantic trade that led to the settlement of these communities in order to inform discussion on the varied kinds of dispossession rural fishing communities face in the present.
She is currently teaching a Yale College class called “Inequality and the Anthropocene: Thinking the Unthinkable,” which she co-designed and co-teaches with her advisor. Pedagogically, she is passionate about fostering ethical, inclusive, and caring classroom conversations about inequality and the environment.