Project Description

Home / Members / Graduate Students / Kat Newman-Seymour

RESEARCH AREAS:

  • Queer ecology

  • Environmental justice

  • Social determinants of health

CONTACT:

KAT NEWMAN-SEYMOUR

Doctoral Student; 
Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Western University

Kat Newman-Seymour (they/them) is a PhD student at Western University in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and is part of the collaborative specialization in Environment and Sustainability. Their doctoral supervisor is Dr. Bipasha Baruah (GSWS). Originally from Houston, Texas, Kat earned their BA with honors in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality studies from the University of Houston in 2020, where they were awarded an Undergraduate Mellon Fellowship (2019-2020). Kat is currently a Principal Investigator on a project that centers transgender, non-binary, intersex, and gender-diverse (GIaNT) youth and their puberty health and sex education needs based out of Centennial College in Toronto, ON. For the past two years, they facilitated a 12-hour sexual assault prevention program to teen girls living in London, ON, as a part of a randomized control trial based out of the University of Windsor. Every summer, Kat facilitates Undressing Consent to incoming students at Western. This program is a 90-minute session for students to learn more about consent, sexual violence, and sex education. Kat is also the 2025-2026 SOGS Gender Equity Commissioner.

My doctoral project is investigating how transgender people in Houston, Texas and Toronto, Ontario are effected by climate change. This works seeks to make connections between socioeconomic status, geographical settings, and health outcomes as they are influenced by poor environmental conditions and climate change. This concept, which I am calling “environmental transphobia” is inspired by environmental racism. I hope to contribute to this body of knowledge as well, since roughly 40% of transgender people are non-white. I plan to use mixed methods for this research, combining survey data (quantitative) and one-on-one, semi-structured interviews (qualitative). The survey will ask questions like what is your gender identity, how much income do you make annually, what is your zip/postal code, have you ever been diagnosed with asthma or another respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and so on. In interviews, I hope to gain more insight into how poor environmental conditions and climate change have effected my participants, in whatever way makes most sense to them. I also plan. to investigate questions like: what could a transgender approach to environmental justice look like? And, what actions are transgender activists taking to confront climate change?

  • Newman-Seymour, K, Haghiri-Vijeh, R. Puberty health and sex education content for online educational resources for gender-independent, intersex, non-binary, and transgender (GIaNT) youth. Sexes, ISSN 2411-5118, 2025 [forthcoming]
  •  *Haghiri-Vijeh, R., *Newman-Seymour, K., Beley, T. J.., Newman, M., Huizenga, D., Sobhan, F. (Submitted Feb 2025) Gender-affirming online resources for gender-independent, intersex, nonbinary, and transgender (GIaNT) children and youth: A scoping review. JBI Evidence Synthesis.

*These authors contributed equally [under consideration]

  • *Haghiri-Vijeh R, *Newman-Seymour K, Huizenga D, Hung A (2023) The development and the use of gender-affirming online resources and games for gender-independent, intersex, non-binary, and transgender (GIaNT) children and youth: A scoping review protocol. PLoS ONE 18(11): e0294869. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294869

*These authors contributed equally

  • Newman, Kat. “Running at Cisnormative Walls: Transgender Characters in The Danish Girl, Orange is the New Black, and Euphoria.” FrameWorks: A Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Interdisciplinary Humanities, vol. 1, Fall 2020. pp. 98-111.
  • Sexuality Studies Association Conference, McGill University, 2025

“Social and Queer Ecologies: The relationships between the disciplines and why they should be considered as one mode of research lens”

  • *Keynote speaker: The Joy and Politics of Drag (with drag performance) Western University,

Worlding Beyond the end of the World conference

  • Sexuality Studies Association Conference, McGill University, 2024 (abstract accepted, conference canceled)

“Social and Queer Ecologies: The relationships between the disciplines and why they should be considered as one mode of research lens”

  • Queer Research Day, Western University, 2023

Presented existing research on dissertation under the title, “Environmental Transphobia: A Preliminary investigation of socioeconomic status and the       effects of climate change on transgender individuals in the U.S.”

  • Frameworks Symposium, University of Houston Honors College, 2020

Virtually presented, “The Cisnormative Wall: Modern Transgender Representations in The Danish Girl, OITNB, and Euphoria.”

Winter 2026 [forthcoming], Queer Ecology: Past, Present, Future (Instructor)

Fall/Winter, 2024-2025, Feminist Theory and Practice (TA)

Winter, 2024, Gender and Sport (TA)

Fall, 2023, Introduction to Sexuality Studies (TA, Tutorial Facilitator)

Fall/Winter, 2022-2023, Introduction to Gender and Women’s Studies (TA, Tutorial Facilitator)