Mindfulness Chaplain - Dr Kitty Wheater | Multi-Faith and Belief Chaplaincy, For All Faiths and None

Dr Kitty Wheater is the Mindfulness Chaplain, and runs the UoE Mindfulness Programme for students and staff.

Dr Kitty Wheater is a mindfulness practitioner, social and medical anthropologist, and writer. Kitty joined the University of Edinburgh in 2019. She began practising mindfulness in 2009, and trained to teach Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy at the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, where she also spent some years training mindfulness teachers in the UK and internationally as an Associate. Kitty has a DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Oxford, where her doctoral and postdoctoral research focused on embodiment, ethics and pedagogy in mindfulness-based interventions. 

As a practitioner focusing on mindfulness in higher education, Kitty is particularly interested in supporting ongoing practice for students and staff, and the evidence-base for mindfulness in university settings. She specialises in trauma-sensitive mindfulness and mindfulness for pain, burnout, and chronic illness. 

A photograph of Dr Kitty Wheater, Mindfulness Chaplain

At the University Chaplaincy, Kitty runs the Mindfulness Programme of courses, workshops, retreat days, and several weekly lunchtime drop-in sessions. She also regularly creates online resources open to the general public as well as the University. Kitty is the author of the weekly MindLetter, a reflective essay on wellbeing and living a good life, which has over 500 subscribers across the University and been picked up by the BBC. Kitty’s guided meditation tracks in the Library of Mindfulness Practices have been viewed 70,000 times, and her online toolkits on Mindfulness for Sleep, Mindfulness for Zoom Fatigue and Mindfulness for Pain are available for general access.

Elsewhere in the Chaplaincy Kitty hosts  PhD Book Club, which welcomes PGR students from all disciplines to read fiction and non-fiction casting light on life in research; The Village (with Susie Feest), a quarterly forum for staff and PGRs for reflecting on and re-imagining university culture and purpose; and the Student Support and Wellbeing Journal Club, which offers research-prompted conversations and reflective practice for all staff in student support and wellbeing roles.

Alongside these projects, Kitty offers bespoke workshops to student cohorts and staff teams across the University. She has taught for the Business School, Medical School, Edinburgh Global, Critical Care MSc, Edinburgh College of Art, and various research teams. She also collaborates and consults on projects to do with mindfulness, spirituality, creative practice and student wellbeing within and outside the University.

To get in touch, email Kitty directly, or for practical queries about the Mindfulness Programme please contact mindfulness@ed.ac.uk.

Selected writing and publications

Of Mutual Things: Observations in Four Parts, Main Point Books, January 2026.

Self-Care and Wellbeing in the Face of COVID-19: Multidisciplinary perspectives and interprofessional experiences. Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, April 2023. (first author)

Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness for Students: an overview (248.46 KB / PDF)

BACP Journal of University and College Counselling, November 2022.

No Time Like the Present: Mindfulness, temporality and the therapeutics of kairos. Anthropology Today, April 2022. 

A Trauma-Sensitive Approach to Teaching and Learning. Times Higher Education, March 2022. 