Beth Katz

Research Scholar

Courtesy Appointment

Dr. Beth A. Katz brings more than two decades of professional experience initiating and bridging research, practice, and teaching from a variety of disciplines including politics and international relations, public policy, social work, migration and legal studies, education, religious studies, sociology, and business. In July 2025, she received her PhD in Politics and International Relations from the University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral research explored how practitioner efforts to welcome and include immigrants in the UK and the US during the Brexit and first Trump eras were impacted by their national governments’ harsh immigration approaches. Beth also holds a Master of Public Policy and a Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan with a focus on international human rights policy and a Bachelor of Science in Education from Creighton University.

Prior to embarking on the PhD programme, Beth founded and for nearly ten years ran a US-based non-governmental organization that worked to advance community-based social inclusion, particularly around religious and cultural identity and diversity. Her work grew to encompass inclusion efforts on multiple levels of society (Iocal, regional, national, international, and online) and collaborations with practitioners and researchers in other countries as well as with governments and intergovernmental organisations. In addition, she has developed and taught a number of undergraduate and graduate courses on social inclusion; religious and cultural identity, diversity, and rights; and international conflict management at the Creighton University Heider College of Business and the University of Nebraska at Omaha College of Arts and Sciences and College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences.

As a pracademic researcher, she engages with and across academic and practical spaces to co-produce and disseminate knowledge that contributes towards meaningful social change. In doing so, she seeks to build and support connectivity, collaboration, and learning within and among the variety of constituencies and epistemic communities occupying these spaces. Her approach is in part shaped by an intense desire to help address social inequities and issues by making the exploration of them collaborative, accessible, and relevant for multiple audiences.