Kathleen Stock (UnHerd)
Kathleen Stock is a British philosopher and writer. She was a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex and left in 2021 following student protests against her views on sex and gender identity. Her book Material Girls was published that same year.
More about this on this site: Kathleen Stock — Material Girls.
What can be found
Stock has a Substack, but it currently contains no articles. Her current work appears on the British opinion platform UnHerd, where she is a contributing editor. She writes about feminism, gender identity, freedom of speech and broader cultural issues. Together with Julie Bindel, she also runs The Lesbian Project.
Background
Stock is considered one of the best-known gender-critical academics. An academic overview of this movement can be found at Oxford University Press — Gender-Critical Feminism. Supporters regard her as an example of threatened academic freedom, while critics consider her views harmful to transgender people. Comparable cases at universities are tracked by Academics for Academic Freedom. See also critical perspectives and glossary.
Education and academic career
Stock was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. According to Wikipedia, she studied at Exeter College, Oxford, and the University of St Andrews and received her PhD from the University of Leeds in 2001. After brief appointments in Lancaster and at the University of East Anglia, she joined Sussex in 2003. In December 2020, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to higher education. More than six hundred academics subsequently signed a letter criticising the honour. From 2018 onward, she had publicly opposed a reform of the Gender Recognition Act that would have allowed self-identification.
Departure from Sussex and its aftermath
In October 2021, students demanded her resignation. Stock resigned on 28 October 2021; according to Times Higher Education, police had advised her to stay away from campus and have cameras installed at her home. In November 2021, she became a fellow of the University of Austin. In March 2023, she founded The Lesbian Project with Martina Navratilova and Julie Bindel, and on 30 May 2023 she spoke at the Oxford Union amid protests. In March 2025, the British regulator Office for Students fined the University of Sussex £585,000 for failing to protect freedom of speech. The university successfully challenged the fine: the High Court overturned it on 29 April 2026.
How to assess this source
At UnHerd, Stock is listed as a contributing editor. Her columns are by no means always about gender; recent pieces have covered universities, artificial intelligence and politics. They are opinion pieces by a philosopher, not empirical research. Her developed argument about sex and gender identity appears in Material Girls; see the profile of Hachette UK for more information.