Welcome to Katharine Cheston

Katharine recently completed a Wellcome-funded PhD at the Institute for Medical Humanities. Her thesis provided a critical evaluation of the concept of ‘medically unexplained symptoms’. Drawing on both contemporary published memoirs and testimony gathered through semi-structured interview, it analysed how women’s narratives of these complex and poorly understood illnesses are shaped by experiences of being shamed and stigmatised. 

Katharine is currently an Honorary Fellow at the IMH and has recently been awarded a Mildred Blaxter postdoctoral fellowship from the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness, during which she will develop further outputs from her doctoral research, focused on stigma.

Katharine has been engaged in voluntary, activist, and academic work on myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) for well over a decade. Supported by the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities, her work will extend into 2026 and will explore how medical humanities researchers can work in partnership with organisations in the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise sector. In particular, Katharine will be working with Action for ME on their Big Survey, which takes place every five years to explore people’s experiences of, and insight into, living with ME in the UK. 

We warmly welcome Katharine to Durham and look forward to working with her.