Rachel Meach is a social and cultural historian of medicine and health in the twentieth and early 21st centuries. She is currently a Research Associate on the Life Support: Technologies, Institutions and Experiences in the History of Intensive Care Medicine, 1945-2020 project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and led by Professors Carsten Timmerman at the University of Manchester and Flurin Condrau at the University of Zurich. 

As part of this project, Rachel focuses on the history of intensive care in the UK tracing its emergence in the 1950s and its development as a distinct medical field from the 1960s through to 2020, including the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rachel is particularly interested in using oral history to understand changing patient experiences of intensive care and investigating the emergence of iatrogenic illnesses associated with intensive care technologies and practices. 

Prior to joining the University of Manchester, Rachel held postdoctoral postions at Durham University and the University of the West of Scotland, where she conducted research on topics including long Covid and post-traumatic stress. She completed her PhD at the University of Strathclyde in 2022, funded by the Wellcome Trust and undertaken jointly between the Scottish Oral History Centre (SOHC) and the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare (CSHHH). Her doctoral thesis provided the first patient-centred history of Type 2 diabetes. 

Rachel's broader research interests include the history of chronic illness, holistic and 'alternative' approaches to medicine, the history of psychiatry, and oral history theory and practice. She is currently completing her first monograph, A Spoonful of Sugar: Diet and Diabetes in Britain and the United States, 1945-2020.