Kate Gibeault

Dr. Kate Gibeault has served as the Director of the Cohen Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College since 2022. She holds a B.A. Degree (Religious Studies and English) from Connecticut College as well as a M.T.S. degree (Religion, Ethics, and Politics) and a Th.D. (Religion and Society) from Harvard Divinity School.

Trained as an anthropologist of religion, Dr. Gibeault’s primary area of expertise is memorialization and meaning making in the wake of mass atrocities. Her first major research project involved five years of ethnographic fieldwork in New York City after the September 11, 2001 attacks. She analyzed how individuals at a small 9/11 museum used practices such as memorialization, storytelling, and embodied practices to cope after this life-shattering event. Since that time, Dr. Gibeault has gone on to conduct additional research on related topics such as: religious responses to school shootings, the grieving practices of unhoused people, memory and memorialization of the Holocaust, and more. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed sources such as the MAVCOR Journal, the Oxford Encyclopedia of Religion, the Journal of Interreligious Studies, and more.

At Keene State, Dr. Gibeault leads the Cohen Institute’s work in designing and implementing programs and events related to Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She also teaches undergraduate courses on topics related to the Holocaust and a graduate-level course on “Working with Communities After Trauma.” 

Beyond her role at the college, Dr. Gibeault serves in a wide range of professional capacities. She is co-chair of the Teaching Religion Unit of the American Academy of Religion, an advisor to the Pluralism Project at Harvard, a board member of the NH Coalition to End Homelessness, and a member on the NH Commission for Holocaust and Genocide Education. 

Photo credit: Hannah Schroeder/Keene Sentinel