Catherine White

Catherine has been honoured as a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2022, longlisted for AllBright’s Innovative Trailblazer Award and heralded as one of “Five Activists To Watch” by the Trouble Club (previous speakers including Gloria Steneim and Margaret Atwood).

Her debut book This Thread of Gold: A Celebration of Black Womanhood was published to critical acclaim in the UK in June 2023 by Dialogue Books. It was named by the New Statesman as an essential book for 2023, as the i‘s non-fiction book of the month, and by bestseller Afua Hirsch as “extraordinary…a stunning debut from a young author that feels, and reads, like it has been decades in the making.” In June 2024, it launched across the United States through Penguin Random House and the final chapter is now being made into a film starring Gugu Mbatha Raw MBE. Billed as “a love letter from Catherine to the daughter she might one day have, guiding her through the ‘magical, messy years of becoming’, the film is part guidebook, part exuberant narrative and part poetry – a rich, visual standalone piece intended to inspire and embolden the next generation of women.’ She was subsequently selected by Meta for their illustrious Author Programme and published her second book, Rebel Takes: On the Future of Food in October 2024.

Through Kusini Productions she has produced a slate of multi-award winning films including Fifty-Four Days, which she also wrote, directed and starred in alongside iconic British actress Celia Imrie. Fifty-Four Days was selected for over 50 film festivals worldwide and received BAFTA and Oscar acclaim before being sold to American Airlines. Other notable projects include Ceres starring BAFTA, Emmy® and Olivier award-nominated Juliet Stevenson, and BBC featured Look Up, released globally on World Suicide Prevention Day.

She can be seen in Amazon Prime’s Ten Percent, Channel 4’s Threesome (S1 and 2) and Netflix’s Dracula. She recently joined the Royal Shakespeare Company on Gregory Doran’s swansong production of Cymbeline and is about to commence filming on a Netflix series. She worked as a Director’s Mentee on Black Mirror and is currently working as writer/director on her debut TV series – female-led thriller The Primes, animated film To My Daughter, and her debut feature film Black Samphire raising awareness around water pollution.

As a UN Gender Expert, Catherine established “Changemakers” – a partnership between UNITAR and the Premier League. The initiative combined a leadership, gender equality and mental health programme with sport to empower more than 1,000 young women and girls in England and Wales.

She regularly speaks at events, on panels and in the media on gender and race equality and has written for the likes of Refinery 29, BBC, Shado and Bad Form, as well as being featured in publications such as Metro, Rolling Stone and Variety.

She is a proud ambassador for PAPYRUS, the UK’s national charity for the prevention of young suicide, and a proud mentor on The Page One Project.

My main advice for students today is to just try EVERYTHING. Be bold and be fearless. Oxford University and Teddy Hall in particular provide you with opportunities: the comfort of a family who will support you if you need, but also the courage of a lion. You CAN do that thing you thought you never dared to do. And there is an entire community around you who will lift you up and declare that they are proud of you for doing so. My year at the Hall was one of the greatest of my life so far and I will forever hold it dearly in my heart.

Read more about Catherine’s time at St Edmund Hall.

Accepting the Honorary Fellowship is the greatest honour of my life so far. I arrived at Teddy Hall – and Oxford – with big dreams. The fact that I was a young Black woman from a state school in the East Midlands did not deter me. I knew that the chance to study at Oxford was going to present me with opportunities that I would never encounter otherwise. I leapt in and did not look back. It was the first place I explored my love for performing and especially for combining art with activism. It was the first place that I felt I was truly taken seriously with each of my many hats. It was also a time of unadulterated joy; friends for life and the sort of experiences that have imbued me with the confidence I now carry with me wherever I go. My promise, to myself, and to my College, is that I will never stop seeing this as an opportunity. I will treasure this moment, lifting others with me as I climb, for the rest of my life.