Catherine Storey

Catherine Storey is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Sydney Medical School at the University of Sydney. She graduated from the University of Sydney in 1972 with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery and earned a Master of Science from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science in 2001. Her medical career began in 1972 as a junior resident medical officer at the Royal North Shore Hospital. Among the first women to train in neurology under the new rules of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians in the 1970s, she studied at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square, London, where she was the first female registrar. She headed the Stroke Unit at Royal North Shore Hospital from 1997 to 2010 and the Neurology Department from 1999 to 2007 before retiring from clinical practice in 2010.

Post-retirement, Storey has focused on the history of medicine, serving as Managing Curator of the University of Sydney Medical School Museum since 2016 after initiating its Sydney Medical School history collection in 2014, now on permanent display. Since 2015, as Honorary Archivist for Royal North Shore Hospital and the Northern Clinical School, she reorganized and catalogued archival collections, promoted them to researchers, and encouraged student historical research projects. She contributed to clinical teaching and research supervision at the University, curated exhibitions from Fisher Library's Rare Books Collection, conducted historical tours of the Blackburn Building, and authored its short history published in the Medical Journal of Australia. Storey has been President of the Medical Alumni Association since 2010, is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, and served as President of the International Society for the History of Neurosciences. She received the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in 2011 for service to medicine in neurology, stroke education, and professional associations, and an Honorary Fellowship from the University of Sydney in 2022. Key publications include "Acquiring surgical skills: the history of surgical teaching at the University of Sydney 1883–2014," "A brief history of the specialties from Federation to the present" (2014), and "‘So near and yet so far’: the early women of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians – the first 20 female MRACP 1938–1947" (2022).

Professional Email: catherine.storey@sydney.edu.au