Kay Saville-Smith

Katherine Julie Saville-Smith (known as Kay) is a New Zealand sociologist, specialising in issues related to housing. In 2018 Saville-Smith was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to seniors and housing. In 2024 the Royal Society Te Apārangi awarded Saville-Smith the Metge Medal.

Academic career

Saville-Smith completed a master's degree at the University of Canterbury in 1982, followed by a PhD titled Cumbria's encounter with the East Indies c.1680-1829: gentry and middling provincial families seeking success at the University of Lancaster in 2016. Her doctoral research was inspired by family connections in Cumbria, but also by the loss of archival sources on her first study choice, the decline of the region's iron industry. In 2018 Boydell Press published a book Provincial Society and Empire: The Cumbrian Counties and the East Indies, 1680-1829 based on Saville-Smith's doctoral research.

Saville-Smith is a sociologist, and has researched housing in New Zealand for thirty years. In 2024 the Royal Society Te Apārangi awarded Saville-Smith the Metge Medal, for "her work at the forefront of New Zealand housing research, working with communities, government, and private and public sectors".

Selected works