Kathy is Professor of Agricultural Chemistry within the School of Life and Medical Science (LMS) and is Research Director for the Agriculture and Environment Research Unit (AERU) which has three senior researchers. Research activities are largely concerned with evaluating and managing the sustainability of agriculture particularly with respect to pollutant fate (pesticides, nitrates, phosphates etc.), transport, toxicity and management predominately for applications such as risk assessments, policy development and evaluation, and sustainability profiling. Whilst her main work focus is research, Kathy does have some academic responsibilities. She is a member of the Schools Research Executive Group. Kathy has a small teaching role mainly at post-graduate level.

Kathy's research, and that of AERU, is mainly concerned with developing, assessing and encouraging on-farm implementation of agri-environmental policy. It is funded by a wide range of different organisations from European, wider international and national government bodies, industry and NGO's. Topics addressed are broad but are mainly concerned with the environmental assessment of farming practices, environmental labelling of produce, food chemistry, fate and transport of agricultural pollutants and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Kathy is the lead for the Pesticide Properties Database - a globally used resource for pesticide data used to support risk assessments.

Kathy is an affiliate member of the IUPAC Committee on Crop Protection Chemistry and served a five-year period on the Crop Protection Committee of the Society of Chemical Industry. She is an INNOVATE project assessor and the UK editor for the Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment journal.