Professor Katy Vincent

About

Professor Katy Vincent graduated from King's College School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of London in 2000, having also obtained an intercalated BSc in Biomedical Sciences & Anatomy (1997). She completed the majority of her postgraduate training in obstetrics and gynaecology in the Oxford Deanery, obtaining a CCT in 2015. During this time, Professor Vincent undertook a DPhil in Professor Irene Tracey's Pain Imaging Neuroscience group investigating the influence of hormones on pain processing in humans and continued post-doctoral work as an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer and then as the Senior Pain Fellow in the department. Professor Vincent was appointed as the Senior Fellow in Pain in Women in 2019.

Additional current roles include: Chair of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) SIG on Abdominal and Pelvic Pain; member of the RCOG Blair Bell Research Committee; and Medical Advisory Panel member for Endometriosis UK.

Chronic pain is common. In the UK alone approximately 7.8 million people live with chronic pain and, at any time, over a third of households contain someone in pain. Women suffer with almost all chronic pain conditions to a much greater extent than men. Additionally, they also suffer from female-specific pains, particularly in their pelvis, including period pain (dysmenorrhoea) and the pains associated with diseases such as endometriosis.

Professor Vincent  leads the Pain in Women group, where they use a variety of methodologies to explore mechanisms generating and maintaining pain in women. A key focus of the group, in collaboration with the EndoCaRe Centre in Oxford, is mechanisms of endometriosis-associated pain.