Neko Mellor

My academic background is in English Literature, with a focus on the medical humanities and particularly pain studies. It was during my Masters that I began researching chronic pain, and I completed my Masters dissertation on Grace Stuart’s 1953 pain narrative, Private World of Pain.

My PhD analysed narratives of chronic pain by female contemporary anglophone authors, encompassing experiences of assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and invalidation in accounts of conditions including endometriosis, breast cancer, and chronic Lyme disease. Here, I developed an embodied reading methodology drawing on cripistemology, affect theory, and new materialism, centring my experiences of pain, disability, and neurodiversity and foregrounding their effects on reading, including misreading and the fragmentation of meaning.

I have also developed and shared materials for disabled researchers, presenting workshops and disseminating comprehensive supportive resources for disabled researchers.

Publications

Journal article

Mellor, Neko. “Cripping the Pain Scale: Literary and Biomedical Narratives of Pain Assessment” Medical Humanities 49, no. 4 (2023): 593–603.

Review

Moving Worlds: Journal Issue Review

Conferences and Presentations

• October 2025: interviewed on the award-winning podcast Research Culture Uncovered on pain’s expressive difficulties and inclusive research culture.
• September 2025: presentation entitled Archival Work: Support for Disabled Researchers as part of an archival research workshop for new postgraduates in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures
• 2022: co-presented a workshop, ‘(Dis)Ability in the Academy’, at the Medical Humanities Research Group
• 2021: delivered a seminar on embodied reading, shame, and menstrual research at the Medical Humanities Research Group
• April 2021: conference paper ‘Pain and Shame in Hilary Mantel and Abby Norman’s Endometriosis Memoirs’, at the Northern Network for Medical Humanities Research Congress.
• July 2021: conference paper ‘Cripping Eula Biss’ Pain Scale’, at the Centre for Disability Studies Postgraduate Conference.

Teaching

Foundations of English studies, contemporary life writing, medical humanities, disability studies

Qualifications

• PhD English Literature
• MA English Literature
• BA (Hons) English Language and Literature