A Maine native, Kate's Ph.D. dissertation at Howard University, The Transnational Dimensions of Africans and African Americans in Northern New England, 1776–1865, explored the complexities of the shipbuilding economies of northern New England, their connections to the slave trade, and how Africans and African Americans resisted slavery and racism.

More recently, her research has focused on the connections between northern New England and the illegal slave trade to Brazil and Cuba, ca. 1830-1850. The Pejepscot region, and Brunswick in particular, has some surprising connections to this unforgivable period in American history.