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(Episode 136) Beyond the Pain Scale: Embodied Research — with Dr Neko Mellor
Show Notes
Episode Summary:
In Beyond the Pain Scale: Embodied Research, host Dr Heledd Jarosz-Griffiths speaks with Dr Neko Mellor about how chronic pain, disability, and neurodiversity shape both research and writing. Drawing on her PhD in English at the University of Leeds, Neko explores how twenty-first-century women authors represent pain, reflecting on the limits of medical pain scales, the challenges of articulating ongoing pain, and what it means to research through the body. Blending literary analysis with lived experience, she examines how pain is expressed, understood, and misunderstood—both medically and culturally—and what this means for disabled and neurodivergent researchers navigating academia.
Content note:
This episode discusses chronic pain, disability, neurodiversity, and lived experience in research. These themes include personal reflections on illness, embodiment, and medical care. While the conversation is supportive and aims to promote understanding and inclusion, some listeners may find aspects of it emotionally resonant. If the issues raised in this episode affect you, please see the support and resources linked below.
Key takeaways
🔹 Beyond the Pain Scale
Neko critiques conventional pain measurement, showing how numerical scales capture intensity but overlook meaning, context, and emotional reality.
🔹 Writing Through Pain
Exploring memoir, lyric essays, and autoethnography, Neko reveals how narratives struggle to contain ongoing pain—and how resisting neat endings can be an act of truth.
🔹 Embodied and Neurodivergent Research
Drawing on her lived experience of Ehlers–Danlos Syndrome, fibromyalgia, ADHD, and dyspraxia, Neko describes how embracing embodiment reshaped her research approach and challenged academic conventions.
🔹 Inclusive
Supervision and Support
The discussion highlights the importance of flexible supervision, awareness of Disability Services and DSA, and the power of compassionate academic relationships.
🔹 Community and Connection
From peer networks and online neurodivergent communities to the grounding comfort of pets, Neko reflects on how connection sustains disabled researchers.
🔹 Towards an Embodied
Research Culture
The episode calls for academia to value lived experience as knowledge and to make space for embodied, experimental, and inclusive methodologies.
Resources and support
- University of Leeds Disability Services
- Disabled Students Allowance (DSA)
- “Writing pain and the non-linear body: Towards an embodied poetics” – Medical Humanities (Mellor, 2023)
- Disabled Academic Collective
- The body keeps the score - Bessel Van Der Kolk
Connect with our guest
Dr Neko Mellor🔗LinkedIn
Read Neko’s articlein Medical Humanities
Follow us:
💙Bluesky @researcherdevleeds.bsky.social
💼LinkedIn @ResearchUncoveredPodcast
📩Contact [email protected]
View all episodes
By Research Culturosity, University of LeedsShow Notes
Episode Summary:
In Beyond the Pain Scale: Embodied Research, host Dr Heledd Jarosz-Griffiths speaks with Dr Neko Mellor about how chronic pain, disability, and neurodiversity shape both research and writing. Drawing on her PhD in English at the University of Leeds, Neko explores how twenty-first-century women authors represent pain, reflecting on the limits of medical pain scales, the challenges of articulating ongoing pain, and what it means to research through the body. Blending literary analysis with lived experience, she examines how pain is expressed, understood, and misunderstood—both medically and culturally—and what this means for disabled and neurodivergent researchers navigating academia.
Content note:
This episode discusses chronic pain, disability, neurodiversity, and lived experience in research. These themes include personal reflections on illness, embodiment, and medical care. While the conversation is supportive and aims to promote understanding and inclusion, some listeners may find aspects of it emotionally resonant. If the issues raised in this episode affect you, please see the support and resources linked below.
Key takeaways
🔹 Beyond the Pain Scale
Neko critiques conventional pain measurement, showing how numerical scales capture intensity but overlook meaning, context, and emotional reality.
🔹 Writing Through Pain
Exploring memoir, lyric essays, and autoethnography, Neko reveals how narratives struggle to contain ongoing pain—and how resisting neat endings can be an act of truth.
🔹 Embodied and Neurodivergent Research
Drawing on her lived experience of Ehlers–Danlos Syndrome, fibromyalgia, ADHD, and dyspraxia, Neko describes how embracing embodiment reshaped her research approach and challenged academic conventions.
🔹 Inclusive
Supervision and Support
The discussion highlights the importance of flexible supervision, awareness of Disability Services and DSA, and the power of compassionate academic relationships.
🔹 Community and Connection
From peer networks and online neurodivergent communities to the grounding comfort of pets, Neko reflects on how connection sustains disabled researchers.
🔹 Towards an Embodied
Research Culture
The episode calls for academia to value lived experience as knowledge and to make space for embodied, experimental, and inclusive methodologies.
Resources and support
- University of Leeds Disability Services
- Disabled Students Allowance (DSA)
- “Writing pain and the non-linear body: Towards an embodied poetics” – Medical Humanities (Mellor, 2023)
- Disabled Academic Collective
- The body keeps the score - Bessel Van Der Kolk
Connect with our guest
Dr Neko Mellor🔗LinkedIn
Read Neko’s articlein Medical Humanities
Follow us:
💙Bluesky @researcherdevleeds.bsky.social
💼LinkedIn @ResearchUncoveredPodcast
📩Contact [email protected]