Melissa Fielding is a critical human geographer at the University of Cambridge and Research Associate in NIHR ARC East of England’s Palliative and End-of-Life Care theme.
Melissa completed her PhD in Geography at Cambridge in 2023. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on socioeconomic inequity, the governance and provision of health and social care, and the material conditions of everyday life. Her current project investigates how general practitioners perceive their shifting responsibilities in palliative care amid institutional restructuring and broader changes in healthcare policy and practice. She is also in the process of beginning a new research programme exploring the lived experiences of housing insecurity at the end of life, investigating how barriers within housing systems influence end-of-life trajectories and access to palliative care.
Her work is grounded in feminist and critical geographical theory and shaped by social justice frameworks. She uses qualitative and participatory methods including ethnography, creative visual methods and action research to explore how communities navigate care, inequality and systemic change.