Catharine Coleborne is an historian interested in mental health, institutions, and families, stories and secrets. Her work on colonial institutions and 'madness' has received international attention. Most recently, she published WHY TALK ABOUT MADNESS? BRINGING HISTORY INTO THE CONVERSATION (2020) with Springer Palgrave as a critical intervention into the discussion about the relevance of historical knowledge to mental health in the present. In that book she examined the role played by storytelling in public as a way to heal memories of mental illness.