Teaching Assistant Professor

Research Interests:

Cultural sociology, violence, research methods, anti-colonial research, discourse analysis, cultural heritage, gender and intersectionality, settler colonialism.

Contact Information:

Office Number: AA4082

Email: kam813@mun.ca

Ph: 709-864-7446

Personal Profile:

Katherine’s research and teaching centers on cultural sociology, identity, and social inequality within Canada.   Katherine’s research has analyzed hitchhiking, sex work, MMIWG2S, the TRC process, Indigenous-Crown relations and Indigenous status, media representations of race and gender, and the politics of ugliness. 

She is currently working on a project on settler reflexivity and anti-colonial research design in qualitative sociology.  Forthcoming publications include work on reconciliation and political apologies and a transnational social and cultural history of hitchhiking.  While working and teaching at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Katherine also holds an adjunct professor appointment at Acadia University and is a researcher at Dalhousie University. 

While not teaching, Katherine is involved in cultural heritage, feminist activism, and local creative projects.  

Research:

Morton Richards, Katherine. 2025. “Thoughts and Prayers: Comparing Public Apologies for Residential Schools in Canada.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal48 (2). https://doi.org/10.17953/A3.35606.

Morton Richards, Katherine. 2024. “Billboards, Meaning, and the Framing of Social

Inequalities Within Public Service Announcements” in Advertising and Society. Edited by Tiara Good, forthcoming fall 2025 (final submission and approval September 2024). 

Morton Richards, Katherine. 2023. “What a Failed Project Taught Me About Settler Research

With and For Indigenous Peoples” Canada Watch. Robarts Center for Canadian Studies, York University.  Toronto, Ontario. Summer 2023.  

Morton, Katherine. 2019. “Unsettled Ground: the Ruins of Closed Residential Schools and

Canadian Identity.” Canada Watch. Robarts Center for Canadian Studies, York University.  Toronto, Ontario. 

Morton, Katherine. 2018. “Ugliness as Colonial Violence: Mediations of Murdered and

Missing Aboriginal Women.” In The Politics of Ugliness. Sara Rodrigues and Ela Przybylo (Ed.)  Toronto: Palgrave Macmillan.

Morton, Katherine. 2016. "Hitchhiking and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Billboards on the Highway of Tears." Canadian Journal of Sociology. 41(3): 299-326.