I am a medical anthropologist and ethnographer, with a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge. My research explores environmental health, the politics of welbeing, ethics, and creative research methods.

My forthcoming monograph, Injurious Law (Cambridge University Press, 2026) explores the lives of veterans exposed to British nuclear tests as they have sought compensation and healthcare. It reveals how legal processes designed to offer redress can exacerbate contested environmental injuries and generate cascading harms to the wellbeing of claimants and their families.

Currently, I study the relationship between heat, stories, and politics in Australia.  I seek to understand how public stories of increasingly intense heat are being fashioned to build political alliances, to fight or create political polarization, to attend to social inequalities, or to transform idea of the polis and the public good. My work is grounded in a long engagement with the anthropology of ethics, critical medical anthropology and creative writing practice. In drawing these threads together, I curate a ‘stories of heat’ archive - The KILN Archive (Keepsakes of Intense heat, Lives and Narratives). This archive collects public accounts of intense heat moments - from media, government documents, popular culture, and public debate, and pairs them with a creative response, such as a sensorial vignette, a story, a poem, or an artwork.

I also co-organize (alongside with Tarryn Phillips) the Health Ethnographies Collaboratory, an interdisciplinary network that aims to increase understanding of ethnography and spotlight its value for addressing health problems.

@catherinetrundle.bsky.social

www.sunstruckblog.net