Kirstie is a Research Fellow at the Policy Institute, King’s College London. She works across a wide range of social policy areas, with interests in inequalities, social division and equality of opportunity, and the role of values, emotion, identity and trust in policy making and public attitudes.

She is a Co-Investigator for the ESRC-funded World Values Survey in Great Britain, which explores values polarisation in Britain and its implications for policymaking, is a contributor to the Deaton Review on inequalities in the twenty-first century and the H2020 PERITIA project, which studies the affective dimensions of trust in expertise. She has published on a broad range of topics including polarisation, attitudes to immigration, research impact and freedom of expression, and has led evidence reviews and qualitative research for clients including Arts Council England and the Burberry Foundation on cultural programmes that aim to address equality of opportunity.