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University of Sunderland Library

Special Collections

Delve into the history and story of our Special Collections

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Kate Adie OBE grew up in Sunderland and later became Chief News Correspondent at the BBC.

"The city has a wonderful history and growing up in cities like Sunderland does shape you, it makes you the person you are. Sunderland shaped me. It is all to do with where I come from, and I feel very strongly about that."  Kate Adie, 2024

Kate's collection relates to her professional life, documenting a trailblazing broadcast journalism career covering major world events and reporting from war and combat zones, including the Gulf and the former Yugoslavia. Kate's reasons for depositing her archive with the University of Sunderland are to preserve a record of her professional career and to promote scholarship and research within the humanities and social sciences. The collection is a unique archive of documents, reporters' notebooks, photographs, BBC news clips and artefacts relating to Kate's career and placed on indefinite loan with the University Library. Kate continues to add material to the collection.

Kate's published works include: The Kindness of Strangers, Corsets to Camouflage, Into Danger, and Nobody's Child.

Kate maintains connections with Sunderland, referencing the city throughout her books. Kate holds honorary degrees from a number of universities and is Honorary Professor of Journalism at the University of Sunderland. She was awarded an OBE in 1993 and a CBE in 2018.  She won the Richard Dimbleby Award from BAFTA in 1990 and was awarded a BAFTA Fellowship in 2018.

The University of Sunderland has recently completed a project to catalogue the Kate Adie Collection using grant funding from Archives Revealed. To search the collection, please use the Kate Adie Collection catalogue. Completion of this project provides an exciting opportunity to open the collection for wider and more inclusive engagement and interest, within the University of Sunderland's teaching, learning and research, and also locally and nationally.