Professor Kate Pickett & Professor Richard Wilkinson
Kate Pickett - Professor of Epidemiology & Deputy Director of the Centre for Future Health at the University of York
Richard Wilkinson - Emeritus Professor of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham
Show content
Professor Kate Pickett
Kate Pickett is Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of York, and the University’s Champion for Research on Justice and Equality; she is a Fellow of the RSA and of the UK Faculty of Public Health. Kate’s research focuses on the social determinants of health and health inequalities, with a particular interest in child development. Kate is co-author, with Richard Wilkinson, of the bestselling books, The Spirit Level (2009) and The Inner Level (2018). Kate is also a co-founder and trustee of The Equality Trust and a global Ambassador for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.
Professor Richard Wilkinson
Richard studied economic history and the philosophy of science at the London School of Economics before training in epidemiology. From the 1970s onwards, his research focused on of social class differences in death rates. He has played a formative role in international research on the social determinants of health and on the societal effects of income inequality. His books and papers have drawn attention to the tendency for societies with bigger income differences between rich and poor to have a higher prevalence of a wide range of health and social problems. Two of his books have been the subject of documentary films – one called The Great Leveller for the TV Channel 4 Equinox series broadcast in prime time in 1996 (to coincide with the publication of his Unhealthy Societies) and another, called The Divide (based on The Spirit Level) released in April 2016 and now available on Netflix.
Richard is now Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Nottingham Medical School, Honorary Professor at University College London and Visiting Professor at the University of York. He wrote The Spirit Level with Kate Pickett, a best seller now available in 24 languages. It won the 2011 Political Studies Association Publication of the Year Award and the 2010 Bristol Festival of Ideas Prize. He co-founded The Equality Trust (with support from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust). In 2013 Richard received Solidar’s Silver Rose Award and received Community Access Unlimited’s ‘Humanitarian of the Year’ Award. The Irish Cancer Society awarded him the 2014 Charles Cully Memorial medal, and he was the 2017 medalist of The Australian Society for Medical Research.
In the last few years he has given many hundreds of conference addresses and media interviews round the world, including at WHO, the EU, OECD and the World Bank.