Seminar Abstract: We have known for many years that resistance to gastro-intestinal helminth infections requires the generation of a Th2-polarised immune response. The factors which underpin anti-helminth Th2 immunity thus become important to understand. Whilst highly controlled laboratory models are excellent at enabling a dissection of mechanism, they are unable to emulate the multivariate environment in which life exists. The talk will explore the use of a wild house mouse population naturally infected with whipworms to capture the complexity of how multiple variables combine to impact the immune response.

Biosketch: Kathryn completed her PhD at the University of Nottingham in 1989 focussing on aspects of immunity to the intestinal whipworm parasite Trichuris muris. She continued to pursue her interest in parasite immunology at the University of Manchester, becoming a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in 1995 and Professor of Immunology in 2009. Her research group studies the biology of whipworm parasites and the host cellular immune responses to this parasite. She is particularly interested in understanding how immune responses operate in multivariate environments and uses a wild mouse population naturally infected with T. muris to investigate how the immune system integrates with other physiological processes in response to competing challenges.