Research & Publications

I am an extremely experienced researcher with specialisms and research in in careers education, employability development, transferable skills and curriculum, more recently, the future of work.

My publications on employability are as follows:

Daubney, K. (2024) “Sometimes a science, sometimes an art: Cross-institutional collaboration to create an institutional language of transferable skills”. Journal of Learning and Development in Higher Education. Issue 31. https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi31.1180 https://journal.aldinhe.ac.uk/index.php/jldhe/article/view/1180/904

Daubney, K. (2024) “What’s the point of this, Miss?: How transferable skills are developed through the core academic curriculum”. Career Matters. 12(2) April 2024, 14-15. Career Development Institute.

Daubney, K. (2024). “Lessons in Readiness: Self-determination and Student Agency in Careers, Employability, and Success”. JANZSSA – Journal of the Australian and New Zealand Student Services Association32(1), 10–18. https://doi.org/10.30688/janzssa.2024-1-04

Daubney, K. (2023), “Creating a language of transferable skills for your institution: 7 top tips”, Higher Education Digest, (22 November 2023)

Daubney, K. (2022), “‘Teaching employability is not my job!’: redefining embedded employability from within the higher education curriculum”, Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, 12(1), 92-106. [This article explains how I developed the approach to extracting employability from higher education curriculum, and compares it with approaches such as graduate attributes.]

Daubney, K. “Surfacing the employability value of the humanities.” Higher Education Policy Institute blog (29 September 2021) https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2021/09/29/surfacing-the-employability-value-of-the-humanities/ [This blog was provided at the invitation of HEPI to consider how extracted employability can surface the wider transferable value of humanities degrees in the workplace.]

Daubney, K. (2021) Careers Education to Demystify Employability (Open University Press/McGraw Hill) [I wrote this book to bring approaches I have innovated for higher education into the pre-18 context and show how any careers programme can achieve more impact; it also references other work developed in HE careers.]

Daubney, K. (2021), ““Employability is not inimical to good learning”*: rearticulating school academic curricula to surface their employability value”, Journal of Work-Applied Management, 13(1), 103-116. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWAM-08-2020-0041 [This article takes the approach to extracted employability into the pre-18 context and proposes how pre-18 curriculum can be understood as rich in transferable skills.]

Daubney, K. (2020), “Supporting student careers in challenging times.” WonkHE blog (20 May 2020). https://wonkhe.com/blogs/supporting-student-careers-in-challenging-times/ [I wrote this blog in the early months of the UK’s first COVID lockdown, proposing that the impact of the loss of work experience and internships could be countered by students and graduates understanding better the transferable skills for the workplace they had already developed through their degree.]

Kleinman, M. et al (2019). Innovation and public attitudes in Britain: Challenges for policy-makers. King’s Policy institute https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/innovation-policy-briefing.pdf [I was honoured to contribute to this collaborative briefing paper written by the King’s Policy Institute in partnership with Ipsos Mori and the Centre for London.]

I was also honoured to have my work referenced in the UPP Student Futures Commission Student Futures Manifesto (p.69).

You can watch my video presentation on employability and curriculum in the pre-18 context for educators and careers professionals here. If you would like me to deliver something along those lines for your professional community, please get in touch with me.

My research on extracted employability has been cited in other articles, including by Anna Branford and Julian Lee of RMIT University in Australia, and by Dimitar Karadzhov at the University of Glasgow with international Global Health colleagues.

I have also developed work on applications of the Careers Registration process to career readiness and learning gain. A case study of the work I developed with the team at King’s Careers & Employability can be found here (p.17) in the report that followed a HEFCE Learning Gain Project run by The Careers Group.

I am interviewed for articles on career change, including this one by Natasha Preskey for Refinery29.

My current research is focusing on the future of work, as well as discipline and subject-based applications of extracted employability.

Other Kate Daubneys

In a previous research career, I was a film musicologist. You can find the series of books I edited for Rowman & Littlefield here, and my own book here, as well as a peer-reviewed article about the vocalisation technique of Billie Holiday. I am, however, completely useless at drawing so should not be confused with the supremely talented illustrator Kate Daubney.