Dr Hodgkiss studied medicine at Trinity College, University of Cambridge and Guy's Hospital Medical School, University of London. His postgraduate training in psychiatry was on the Guy's rotation, including 3 years as Clinical Lecturer in Biological Psychiatry at the National Unit for Affective Disorders. He then trained as a Lacanian psychoanalyst and, with a Wellcome Fellowship at University College London, wrote an MD thesis about the history of chronic pain, later published as a single-author monograph, From Lesion to Metaphor (2000). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2008. Dr Hodgkiss has worked clinically with people affected by cancer for over twenty years. He was a Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist at St Thomas' Hospital for 17 years before moving to The Royal Marsden Hospital in 2014 to specialise in the psychiatry of cancer. Dr Hodgkiss recently co-chaired the mental health & psychology pathway group at London Cancer Alliance.