Our much-loved friend and colleague Professor Catherine Will passed away on Monday 12 August 2024 after a long battle with cancer.
Catherine was born on 24 March 1977 and grew up in Leeds. She attended Leeds Girls High school, studying Greek, Latin and History at A level. She was also a keen choral singer. Before university, Catherine took a gap year, teaching English to visually impaired people in Hungary. On her return to the UK, Catherine started a degree in History at Clare College Cambridge, graduating with a first.
It was whilst at Cambridge that Catherine made many friends who remained with her for life – including her partner, Tom. University also galvanised her lifelong concerns with injustice, inequality and environmentalism. She was politically engaged and politically active, organising events – in particular for Oxfam – and attending protests and rallies on issues that remained close to her heart throughout her career.
After University, Catherine won a twelve month scholarship at the Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg, Germany. It was here that she developed an enduring fascination and love for sociology. She decided to pursue a sociological path, completing a Masters and then a PhD in Sociology at Essex University. She was a gifted sociologist and, having completed her PhD, was awarded a Medical Research Council/Economic and Social Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship back at Cambridge.
In 2007, Catherine joined Sussex as a lecturer in Sociology. At that time the Department was small, and Catherine joined a group of nine delivering a highly regarded and typically ‘Sussex’ set of courses. She quickly established herself as integral to the delivery of sociology at Sussex, combining a sharp intellect with collegiality and a wicked sense of humour. It is testament to Catherine’s skill as an educator and communicator that examples of her influence still abound in what is now a large department of Sociology and Criminology.
To give one example, Catherine designed what is still the most effective ‘quantitative research methods for sociologists’ module that we and our students had ever encountered. Incorporating incremental learning, ‘real life’ research and secondary sources, it has taught hundreds of sociology undergraduates how to analyse and produce social statistics. The module was so successful that, although it has evolved with technology, it has remained pedagogically unchanged for over a decade. This may seem a trivial observation, but any scholar that has tried to design quantitative modules will know quite how difficult a job it is.
During this period of Catherine’s life, she also managed to balance the demands of an academic job with raising, with Tom, the sources of her greatest pride and happiness – her children Josie and Fred. Catherine threw herself into motherhood with the same conscientious thought and energy she applied to everything else, and was a role model for other colleagues attempting to combine work and home life. She chose to work part-time while her children were young, but managed to achieve more in 3.5 days per week than most of us could hope to do in five.
In academia, Catherine’s early concerns for equity and fairness blossomed into an impressive and impactful body of research. She conducted important investigating how patients understand their experiences of illness and care such as monitoring their own blood pressure, deciding whether or not to take statins on prescription, or processing their experience of the Covid pandemic.
The quality of Catherine’s research won praise and recognition nationally and internationally. She gained grants from the Economic & Social Research Council, the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness, and the Leverhulme Trust. In 2019, Catherine won a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award – a prestigious grant and the result of a huge amount of effort. The award was unusually large in scope for a social science project, and Catherine was excited to undertake such important and innovative work. It was, then, devastating when Covid meant that revisions and compromises had to be made. Nonetheless, Catherine remained stoic and committed to the project, demonstrating her tenacity and strength of will.
It was during this period, in 2021, that Catherine’s brain tumour was first identified, later diagnosed as an anaplastic astrocytoma. Much to her frustration, both Catherine’s illness, and the treatment made it difficult for her to continue working. However, in a typical example of her sociological curiosity and insight, she began to reflect on her own experiences as a patient. In a post on the Cost of Living blog, she wrote a searching and achingly honest account of the impact her diagnosis had on her life and work, ruminating on how her illness had changed how she viewed research questions related to healthcare. Catherine continued to write about her experience online, becoming a champion for further research into brain tumours.
Catherine was a lovely human. Kind, thoughtful, funny, compassionate and wise. She was a natural sociologist – not content with documenting the world she encountered, but determined to influence it in favour of the under-represented and disenfranchised. She was an activist scholar of the best sort – driven by the belief that the world could, and would, be a better place. It is certainly a better place for having had Catherine in it. As a colleague, she was supportive, interested, and always willing to do more than her share. She is already so missed – those of us who knew and worked with her are devastated at her death. We will endeavour to follow the academic, professional and personal example she set.
Catherine Will Symposium report
Catherine Will was Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of Sussex. Catherine died on 12th August 2024 at age 47 after a long period of illness. Catherine was diagnosed with a form of brain cancer in 2021 but continued to work until just before her death.
Catherine’s work and teaching, friendship and intellect, touched and helped many people, not least in the STS community. Catherine’s friends and colleagues organised this memorial symposium to commemorate her life and work. The symposium was held at the University of Sussex on 14th April 2025, and was generously supported by the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness, MedSoc (BSA), the University of Sussex and the Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts.
The symposium was introduced by Sasha Roseneil, Vice Chancellor of the University of Sussex, and Jo Moran-Ellis, Head of Sussex’s School of Law, Politics and Sociology. There were four panels through the day. The first featured personal reflections from Catherine’s colleagues and former PhD students. The next three panels saw presentations of academic papers connected to, or inspired by, Catherine’s work, and themed around the main areas of Catherine’s research and writing.
The first panel was chaired by Rachel Thomson and Bobbie Farsides, and brought together some of Catherine’s colleagues, collaborators and PhD students. These included Alison Phipps, Gillian Bendelow, Kate Weiner, Ulla McKnight, Kate Spiegelhalter, Eleanor Kashouris and Shadrack Mwele. We heard about the relationships panellists shared with Catherine. Each one was unique, but some common motifs became apparent as the session went on:
Catherine’s generosity: introducing PhD students to her network, nominating colleagues for roles with journals and societies, taking the lead as first author and principal applicant on collaborative work, and placing others as first authors where she knew it would help their careers.
Catherine’s fierce intelligence: her ability to think broadly across literatures, thinking with colleagues and with theory, sharing her excitement over reading, concepts. This translated across her teaching and administration, but also into parenting and friendship. Her intelligence could be both humbling and exciting, and was accompanied by a wicked sense of humour whose warmth allowed her to tease without alienating.
Catherine’s straight talking and writing: we heard how collaborators who first met Catherine through her written works were inspired by her lucid prose, ability to make complex ideas accessible, and coin phrases and ideas that travelled.
A sense of loss and appreciation: recognition of the enormity of the loss associated with her diagnosis and illness. Regret at having to cut short collaborations and relationships – some of which had only just begun, while others had been developed over many years. Recognition that her commitment to keep working through the illness exacted a toll from colleagues who helped her do so.
Although Catherine’s life was cut short, the panel made clear that her intellectual journey was rich, significant and far reaching.
Ben Fincham is Reader in Sociology in the School of Law, Politics and Sociology at the University of Sussex.
Alison Phipps is Professor of Sociology at Newcastle University.
