E X T E N D E D B I O
Rooted in lived experience.
Guided by community.
Respect for lineage.
Working for menstrual justice.
Leadership in Menstrual Health
As Founder & CEO of Menstrual Cycle Support (MCS) — the UK’s first non-clinical menstrual-health service delivered via GP referral — Kate Shepherd Cohen has led national efforts to embed menstrual literacy into UK healthcare, education and policy. MCS courses are now used in over 500 GP surgeries and several schools, and her work has featured in the Financial Times, BBC and HuffPost. She also delivered the TEDx talk “Period Problems: Why There’s Hope.”
Art, Research & Public Engagement
In 2026 she tours I Am a Menstrualist, a research-led performance blending scholarship, lived experience and participatory art to support workplaces, universities and cultural venues in developing cycle-informed, equitable environments and advancing menstrual rights as a human-rights issue.
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Cross-Cultural Foundations
Kate draws on a decade of international conservation work with local and Indigenous communities, alongside sustainability communications and cross-cultural climate campaigns. As Editor of Green Europe (Sawday’s/Penguin, 2009) and a former Protected Landscape consultant, she worked across Africa, Scandinavia, South America and Central Europe, where she learned from female-led community micro-enterprises, sat in circle with women and girls, and witnessed rites of passage. These formative experiences shape her culturally sensitive, justice-oriented approach to menstrual equity. She brings further academic depth as a graduate of Dr Lara Owen’s Masters-level programme in Contemporary Menstrual Studies.
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Roots, Linguistics & Early Influences
Kate is of the Celtic Nations: a Welsh woman with grandmothers from Scotland and Ireland, now based in Cornwall. A linguist at heart, she is currently learning Welsh and Cornish and is a member of the Cornish Language Fellowship and the Endangered Languages Project. She speaks fluent Italian (BA Italian, University of Bristol) and studied Philosophy, Ethics and Semiotics in the department of Umberto Eco at the University of Bologna. Italian-rooted feminism, activism and social-movement theory continue to inform her worldview.
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Lived Experience & Menstrualism
Though she first called herself a “menstrualist” playfully in 2000 — a satirical response to masculinist avant-garde movements — it was her recognition of PMDD in 2015 that revealed the depth of menstrual injustice. Today she uses menstrualist not as satire but as a cultural identity and organising principle, galvanising social change and strengthening the global movement for menstrual rights and justice.
R E S P E C T I N G L I N E A G E
With gratitude the teachers, thinkers and communities whose work has shaped and informed my path in the field of menstruality:
T E A C H E R S
Alexandra Pope and Sjanie Hugo Wurlitzer of Red School, whose pioneering work in Menstrual Cycle Awareness opened the first doorway and continues to expand my sense of menstrual cycle potential.
Dr Lara Owen, whose scholarship in Contemporary Menstrual Studies has deepened the intellectual and cultural roots of my understanding.
Jane Hardwicke Collings, who has illuminated the spiritual dimensions of menstruation with clarity and integrity. Jane was a student of Janine Parvati Baker, one of the pioneers of the early menstrual movement.
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Vanessa Tiegs, mentor and visionary menstrual-blood artist, whose creative practice has broadened my sense of menstrual expression.
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The Menstrual Cycle Support Advisory Board, whose interdisciplinary guidance — spanning clinical practice, research, technology and organisational leadership — has strengthened the rigour of this work.
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Justin Francis OBE, UK Government Advisor on Nature — whose mentorship shaped my understanding of whole-system responsibility. Justin was mentored by social justice activist, Dame Anita Roddick.
M E N S T R U A L I S T S
To all the menstrualists who have come before me, and to every person who has shared their menstrual story in interviews, workshops, circles and one-to-ones — thank you.
Your courage is the ground on which this work stands.
C O M M U N I T Y
I have been able to learn from my menstrual cycle, follow its rhythm and address menstrual stigma thanks to the support of those around me. Thank you to:
Mandy Adams (1970–2021), Red School graduate, who first placed the practice of menstrual cycle awareness in my hands during the hardest years of PMDD.
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The Red School alumni, the Earth Women Rising network, fellow students and graduates of Contemporary Menstrual Studies - Your presence and openness to collaboration has reminded me that this work is, thankfully, never walked alone. ​​
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​​To my family: my three daughters and my partner: the compassion and peace activist, poet, theologian and Buddhist of the Karma Kagyu lineage, Simon Cohen.
C E L T I C
F O L K
W I S D O M
As a Welsh woman living in Cornwall, I recognise the imprint of a cyclical worldview — a reverence for natural rhythms, the turning of the seasons, and the interconnectedness of all life.​
The Celtic Wheel of the Year has been a quiet and steady teacher in my work in menstrual education — a framework through which I understand cyclical time, renewal and return. I celebrate the ways its rhythms meet and resonate with other wheels, other cosmologies, and other systems of knowing.
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C R O S S -
C U L T U R A L
I N F LU E N C E S
I acknowledge the influence of Indigenous ways of being, which have emphasised the significance of relationality, reciprocity and deep listening to land, body and community.
I offer respect to the many cultural traditions and lineages whose teachings intersect with, and enrich, our collective understanding of the menstrual cycle experience.
I remain committed to intercultural dialogue grounded in humility, care and ethical engagement
W O R K
W I T H
I N T E N T I O N
May I continue these lineages with the compassion, steadiness and kindness that I have received, and which have transformed my relationship with the menstrual cycle.
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May I honour the ancestors and serve the children.
May I meet menstrual injustice with the strength drawn from my lineage and our community.