Katharine (Kate) Frederick is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University specializing in industrial development in sub-Saharan Africa from the late pre-colonial to the early post-colonial era. Kate obtained her PhD in economic history (2018) from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. In 2022, her manuscript Deindustrialization in East Africa: Textile Production in an Era of Globalization and Colonization 1830-1940 was awarded the triannual International Economic History Association Dissertation Prize at the World Economic History Congress for dissertations written from 2017-2022 on the 20th and 21st century.

From 2018, she was affiliated with the European Research Council project "Race to the bottom? Family labour, household livelihood and consumption in the relocation of global cotton manufacturing, ca. 1750-1990." In the same year, she co-founded Frontiers in African Economic History, the widely read research blog of the African Economic History Network.

Beginning in 2023, she will serve as Program Coordinator of the RMA History at Utrecht University.