Author & researcher based in the Highlands of Scotland.

Kat Hill’s work focuses on questions of landscape, people, and heritage in various contexts from the bothies of the Scottish Highlands to non-conformist religious communities such as Mennonites in Europe, America and the Global South.

She is the author of the prize-winning book, Baptism, Brotherhood, and Belief: Anabaptism and Lutheranism, 1525-1585 (Oxford University Press, 2015) and her second book, Bothy: In Search of Simple Shelter was released with William Collins in Spring 2024. It was shortlisted for the 2024 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing. 

She is currently working on her third book entitled Endlings: Last Things, Extinctions and Endtimes.

Kat has a PhD from the University of Oxford (2011) and she has received numerous grants and fellowships, including awards from the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the IAS Princeton and IASH at Edinburgh University. She lectured at Oxford, UEA and Birkbeck College for ten years before leaving London for a life in Scotland to write and research. 

She is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt and a European champion.

Curriculum Vitae

Education

BA Modern History, University of Oxford, 1st Class

MSt Historical Research, University of Oxford, Distinction

MA Environmental Humanities, Bath Spa University, Distinction

PhD History, University of Oxford

Residencies/Fellowships/Awards

Pastoral Twilight Artistic Residency

AS Princeton Fellowship

Wainwright Prize Shortlist

IASH Environmental Humanities Fellowship, University of Edinburgh

Gerald Strauss Book Prize

Leverhulme Research Leadership Award

Award for Excellence, University of Oxford

Jowett Exhibition, University of Oxford

Jane Willis Kirkaldy History of Science Prize, University of Oxford

Fletcher Scholarship, University of Oxford

Grants

Plett Foundation Grant

AHRC Doctoral Award, Masters Award and Cultural Engagement Fellowship

British Academy Post-Doctoral Award

British Academy/Leverhulme Small Grants x2

Yale Humboldt Early Modern Global History Travel Grant

TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities)

DAAD German Academic Exchange Scholarship

Substack

Instagram

View fullsize
View fullsize “They leave behind some of their everything, sown fields, some chickens, dogs, mirrors in which fire now sees itself reflected." A poem by Wisława Szymborska that I refer to in 'Unanchored things, displaced people' for the Adrift issue
View fullsize A book purchase inspired this week's Substack on the poignancy of creative endings, all part of my current research on last things. "A few weeks ago, I picked up a second-hand edition of Rupert Brooke’s poetry. It’s a lovely volume
View fullsize In the eves of our home, a family of house martins have returned and the fledglings are taking to the air, flying out of the safety of the nest of mud, wool and dried grass. Last year, with terrible wind and rain, was traumatic. Two nests fell and w
View fullsize What does it mean when something ends? How do we understand endings, especially when it can feel as if we are living at a time when endings are all around us and the world is in crisis? And what do the endings that we mark, notice, accept or contest
View fullsize A swallow drawn on my @les__woods Czech residency. I noted daily the changing sites and sounds of the more-than-human world around me, its rhythms, its temporalities. 24 April the swallows returned from their warm winter skies in the south, not a b
View fullsize A rock pipit set against the vivid colours of lichen-covered rocks and sea thrift. A beautiful spot for a gentle local walk and observing the abundance of life on the cliffs.
View fullsize Another of my Czech drawings. The violet oil beetle who I saw burrowing in the red earth, digging to lay up to 10 000 eggs. Always been a big fan of insects of all kinds, and these are beautiful things.
View fullsize Celebrating access and enjoyment of nature on a day when the right to wild camp on Dartmoor has been recognised by the Supreme Court. Pictured is Peanmeanach bothy on the Ardnish peninsula, now shut as an open bothy, and in BOTHY it was, for me, a
View fullsize Black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius) seen and heard in Czechia last month, the largest of European woodpeckers. With a mournful, almost haunting cry that resounds through the canopy, these birds excavate tree holes in old growth forests. One of the
View fullsize Extract from BOTHY out in paperback now.  Cadderlie. The first bothy I ever visited and a chance to think about the narratives braided around a place, narratives that shape how we see the world. Here are some of those storie
View fullsize Heading back to Skye tonight after almost 6 weeks away from home. Dundee➡️Barrow➡️Prague➡️Orlicke Mountains➡️Prague➡️Edinburgh➡️Hexham All very fun working, writing, thinking and talking about books but glad to be going home.