Staff profile

I am an interdisciplinary medical humanities researcher based at the Institute for Medical Humanities and Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities. 

I am currently leading a research project as part of a collaboration between the Institute for Medical Humanities and national charity Action for ME. Since 2025, I have worked with Action for ME, colleagues at the Institute for Medical Humanities, and a patient and public involvement group to redesign Action for ME’s quinquennial Big Survey into a 52-question instrument examining the impacts of ME, which gathered responses from more than 5,000 people living with ME and Long Covid in the UK. During my current postdoctoral position, I will ensure that the experiences captured by the Big Survey are translated into evidence capable of informing political debate, shaping health and social care services, and supporting change for this neglected community. Alongside its substantive contribution to understandings of ME, the project forges novel methodological ground by demonstrating how medical humanities researchers can work meaningfully in partnership with organisations in the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise sector, and by exploring how medical humanities research can operate at both depth and scale to unearth new insights into a large survey dataset.

In 2024, I completed my Wellcome-funded PhD at the Institute for Medical Humanities. My 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. I am currently preparing my doctoral research for publication as a monograph entitled Shame, Stigma, and the Narrative Construction of ‘Medically Unexplained’ Illness. 

From 2025-2026, I was Mildred Blaxter Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology. During this fellowship, I developed my doctoral research by examining how the stigma associated with ‘medically unexplained’ illness is constructed, mobilised, and ‘weaponised’ across medical, media, and social contexts. I also disseminated the findings of my doctoral work to clinical audiences, including through a presentation at the Royal College of Physicians’ annual conference (Medicine 2025), and I delivered papers at the ‘Recalibrating Stigma’ symposium (Edinburgh, June 2025) and the British Sociological Association’s annual Medical Sociology conference (Newcastle, September 2025).

Selected online publications

• Action for ME's 2025 Big Survey: Why large-scale charity surveys are so important for ME research and treatment Cheston, K. (2026). #ThereforME blog.
• Privilege and Pain: Why the Medical Humanities Matter Cheston, K. (2025). The Polyphony. 
• Beliefs about ME/CFS can shape lives Cheston, K. (2025). BMJ Rapid Response (BMJ 2025; 389: r977).
• Independent Advisory Group Open Letter to Cochrane Bastian, H., K. Cheston, L. Chu et al (2025). 
• Is it really an illness? The stigma of 'medically unexplained symptoms' Cheston, K. (2024). Shame and Medicine Blog.
• Shame, blame and complex, poorly understood illness Cheston, K. (2023). Shame and Medicine Blog.
• Shame, Stigma and 'Unexplained' Symptoms Cheston, K. (2020). The Polyphony.

Journal Article

• A patient perspective on enduring symptoms - the unmet need.
  
  Cheston, K. (2025). A patient perspective on enduring symptoms - the unmet need. Future Healthcare Journal, 12(4), Article 100465. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fhj.2025.100465
• The Long or the Post of It? Temporality, Suffering, and Uncertainty in Narratives Following COVID-19
  
  Cheston, K., Cenedese, M., & Woods, A. (2025). The Long or the Post of It? Temporality, Suffering, and Uncertainty in Narratives Following COVID-19. Journal of Medical Humanities, 46, 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-023-09824-y
• Shame, (In)visibility, and Ill Feelings
  
  Cheston, K. (2025). Shame, (In)visibility, and Ill Feelings. Literature and Medicine, 43(1), 153-176. https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2025.a975548
• Staying with Narrative: Stories of Shame and Gynecological Pain
  
  Cheston, K. (2023). Staying with Narrative: Stories of Shame and Gynecological Pain. Literature and Medicine, 41(2), 391-415. https://doi.org/10.1353/lm.2023.a921569
• (Dis)respect and shame in the context of ‘medically unexplained’ illness
  
  Cheston, K. (2022). (Dis)respect and shame in the context of ‘medically unexplained’ illness. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 28(5), 909-916. https://doi.org/10.1111/jep.13740