Honorary Fellowship awarded to Jonny Coates

We would like to congratulate Dr Jonathan Coates on his appointment as Honorary Fellow and Associate Professor in Practice in the Institute for Medical Humanities.

Jonathan is a GP at St Anthony’s Health Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne, which serves one of the most socio-economically deprived communities in the UK.  He is actively engaged in research related to his practice with the Institute for Medical Humanities.

Since 2021 Jonny has combined this clinical work with a NIHR In-practice Fellowship, hosted by the IMH. Supervised by Jane Macnaughton (IMH), Andrew Russell (Durham Anthropology) and Prof Gill Rowlands (Newcastle Population Health Science Institute), the primary focus of this fellowship has been to complete an MSc in Medical Anthropology from which Jonny recently graduated with distinction. He has also used the time to develop a portfolio of varied but complementary research interests which are united by the theme of health inequalities, in particular the medicalisation of psychosocial distress.

Jonny is closely involved with the IMH’s Wellcome-funded Discovery Research Platform for the Medical Humanities (DRP-MH), and The Practice is one of the three main research sites and a key focus of activity in the Platform. Working with Jesse Proudfoot, Jonny will be involved in a broad programme of activity across the medical humanities which aims to redress the lack of research (particularly in the humanities) in GP practices serving areas of socioeconomic deprivation, with the aim of generating research findings that go some way to hearing hitherto unheard voices and improving outcomes for these marginalised groups.

Jonathan’s research collaborations with Durham academics have proved rich and rewarding for all involved and this new position will ensure these collaborative opportunities continue and expand into the future.