What's the episode about?   In this episode, hear Evie King discuss council funerals, being a funeral office, the unidentified dead, Section 46, dying alone, rituals, respect for the dead, marginalisation and her book Ashes to Admin   Who is Evie?  Evie King is a council worker and writer. A former stand up comedian, she has always written short form pieces in the margins of her various day jobs, contributing to New Humanist, Guardian Comment is Free, BBC Comedy and Viz Comic. Since moving...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Dr. Minakshi Dewan on last rites and rituals in India, gender, faith, religion, funeral pyres, sky burial, caste, gender, discrimination and the professionalisation of rites and funerals Who is Minakshi? Dr Minakshi Dewan is a researcher and writer with a PhD degree in social medicine and community health from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a master's degree in social work from TISS Mumbai. She possesses extensive experience in health,...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Professor Nina Lykke on queer and feminist death studies; posthumanism; the more than human; necropolitics; philosophy, atheism and death; vibrant death; mourning, and ongoing relationships with the dead  Who is Nina?  Nina Lykke, Dr. Phil., Professor Emerita, Gender Studies, Linköping University, Sweden, and Adjunct Professor, Aarhus University, Denmark. Nina participated in the building of Feminist Studies in Scandinavia and Europe more...

Find out more at: https://deathxdesignxculture.info/ or follow the gram RADICAL RE-IMAGININGS FOR THE END OF LIFE  From 4-6 September, the Department of Graphic Design, Falmouth University (UK), and the Death and Culture Network, University of York (UK); in partnership with the Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan (USA), and the Glasgow End of Life Studies Group, University of Glasgow (UK) are hosting the DEATHxDESIGNxCULTURE: RADICAL RE-IMAGININGS FOR THE END OF...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Dr Hannah Gould on death and the dead in Japan, changing death rituals, necromaterials, death rites, caring for the dead, death technologies, vertical burial, material culture and ethnographies of things.  Who is Hannah?  Dr. Hannah Gould is a cultural anthropologist studying religion, materiality, death, and discarding with a regional focus in North-East Asia and Australia. In her words, “she studies the stuff of death and the death of...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Dr Juliet Hooker discuss her book Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss, language and social justice, democracy, and killings by the police in the US Who is Juliet?  Juliet Hooker is the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in Political Science at Brown University, where she teaches courses on racial justice, Black political thought, Latin American political thought, democratic theory, and contemporary political...

In this episode, hear Yasmin Gunaratnam discuss transnational dying and end-of-life care in cities, ethnography, being a carer, writing, education with end-of-life-care professionals, artful risky care, using art methods in social sciences research, palliative art, hospitality, migration and death, an anti-colonial death studies and climate crisis, the genocide in Gaza, yoga, and being an academic with ADHD Who is Yasmin?  Yasmin Gunaratnam is a sociologist interested in how different types...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear M.F. (Mike) Alvarez on suicide, mental health and illness, autoethnography, fine art, reflexive writing, creative writing, interdisciplinarity and biases in the academy  Who is M.F. Alvarez?  M. F.  (Mike) Alvarez is Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, USA. He is the author of two books: The Paradox of Suicide and Creativity (Lexington Books, 2020), and Unraveling: An Autoethnography of Suicide...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear author and vocal coach Clare Hogan discuss death anxiety, breath work, transpersonal psychology, performing death, death cafes and seeing death as an adventure and gateway to more life.   Who is Clare? After completing her GMus at the Royal Northern College of Music, Clare went on to do a Masters by Research at Keele University.  It was there that she discovered an interest in psychology.   Whilst still researching for her MA, Clare...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Professor Lucy Easthope discuss disaster recovery, emergency planning, risk, the Grenfell and Hillsborough disasters in the UK, humanitarian disasters, pregnancy loss, hope and wellbeing. Who is Lucy?  Lucy Easthope is a UK expert and adviser on emergency planning and disaster recovery. She is a Professor in Practice of Risk and Hazard at the University of Durham, and co-founder of the After Disaster Network at the university. She is also a...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Professor Ann Luce on suicide, the ethical reporting of suicide, suicide prevention, the Bridgend suicides, emotional labour in research self-care, and living with post-Covid complications and long Covid. Who is Ann?  Dr. Ann Luce is a Professor of Journalism and Health Communication at Bournemouth University on the southwest coast of England.   She is co-creator of the Suicide Reporting Toolkit www.suicidereportingtoolkit.com a toolkit for...

What's the episode about? This episode accompanies the edited collection Difficult Death, Dying and the Dead in Media and Culture edited by Sharon Coleclough and podcast hosts Bethan Michael-Fox and Renske Visser. In it you will find a discussion between the editors and an interview with the author of the foreword, Professor Ruth Penfold-Mounce, as well as summaries of each chapter to help you navigate and engage with the book. Find out more about the book. How do I cite the episode in my...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Dr Christopher Hood discuss the world’s largest single plane crash, memorials, disasters, Japan and Japanese memorial cultures, writing fiction, plane crashes, mental health and academia, suicide and academia, and much more!  Who is Chris?  Christopher Hood is a Reader in Japanese Studies at Cardiff University. His publications include the Japan: The Basics, Osutaka: A Chronicle of Loss in the World’s Largest Single Plane Crash, and Dealing...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Foluke Taylor discuss writing and the permission to write (and think) differently, the limits of decolonisation, citational practices, therapy, language, grief, biomythography, creatique, different pathways in reading and what ‘we’ should and shouldn’t read, empathy, therapy, the power of not knowing, and the notion of pluriversal realities.   Who is Foluke?  Foluke Taylor is a therapist* writer working with an asterisk to signal black...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Angeline Morrison at the 2023 Falmouth University Haunted Landscapes conference on voicing Black British ancestors through music, folk music and death, W. E. B. Du Bois and sorrow songs, unregistered lives, the stories of Frances Elizabeth Johnson and Caesar, an enslaved African American buried in Hartlepool, as well as pet loss. Plus, highlights from the Haunted Landscapes conference. Who is Angeline?  Angeline Morrison is a singer,...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Ru Callender discuss funerals, radical undertaking, eco-funerals, green undertaking, bereavement, grief and loss. Who is Ru?  Ru Callender is author of the book What Remains? Life, Death and the Human Art of Undertaking. He was moved to become an undertaker through his experience of bereavement and its aftermath. He spent much of his childhood in the hospice where his mother worked, and the caring humanistic philosophy of the hospice...

What's the episode about? Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes on horror studies, the Gothic, graveyards and death, body horror, horror and trauma, film, TV and English Literature and experiencing a transient ischaemic attack, plus highlights from the Death Online Research Symposium (DORS) conference 2023! Who is Xavier?  Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes is Reader in English Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University, co-director of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies and, since 2022,...

In this episode, hear Professor Tony Walter at the 2023 University of Bath CDAS conference on innovation, climate and ecological emergency, mass mortality, grief, loss and social change, as well as highlights from the conference! Who is Tony?  Tony Walter is a sociologist and Emeritus Professor of Death Studies at the University of Bath, UK. His most recent books are Death in the Modern World (2020) and What Death Means Now  (2017). Many of his articles have concerned various channels...

Dr Caroline Bennett is a socio-cultural anthropologist, who works on the Cambodian genocide, with a particular focus on mass graves and their dead, and relationships to, and the politics of, those dead in contemporary Cambodia. She also works on the treatment of human remains after mass death, research emerging from her previous training as a forensic anthropologist, and short experience working on forensic humanitarian projects in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq. As well as being an...

Hazel Marzetti is a post-doctoral Research Associate in the University of Edinburgh’s School of Health in Social Sciences. She currently works on the Leverhulme Trust funded Suicide in/as Politics project which uses qualitative, critical, and arts-based research methods to explore how suicide is represented and used in the UK’s suicide prevention policies, parliamentary debates and charity campaigns 2009-2019. Prior to this role, Hazel completed her PhD at the University of Glasgow’s MRC/CSO...

Jeremy Cohen is an Assistant Professor at McMaster, in the Department of Religious Studies. His research is focused on communities and new religious movements seeking radical-longevity and immortality, as well as the historical and cultural framework of changing North American relationships to technology and death. Jeremy is also the co-founder and co-editor of TalkDeath.com. You can listen to Jeremy’s music, discussed in the podcast, here: https://futurebodies.bandcamp.com/ We talk about...

Helen Wheatley is Professor of Film and Television Studies and co-founder of the Centre for Television Histories at the University of Warwick. She was also Director of the Resonate Festival, the Warwick Institute for Engagement’s year-long programme of events and activities for Coventry’s City of Culture year. Helen works collaboratively with archives and curators to engage the public with the history of British broadcasting, and has been awarded multiple prizes for impact/community...

Esther Ramsay-Jones is a practising psychodynamic psychotherapist and Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy at Birkbeck College, University of London. She also tutors on the Open University's Death, Dying and Bereavement module, and is engaged as a team member in two related research projects. She has worked in dementia and end of life care for many years, currently facilitating reflective practice with hospice at home staff. Her books 'Holding Time' emerged from her PhD work on the...

This special episode accompanies a Special Issue of the academic journal Revenant focused on Death and the Screen. You can find out more about the issue and the journal here: https://www.revenantjournal.com/ Along with discussion from the special issue editors and podcast hosts Dr Bethan Michael-Fox and Dr Renske Visser, and guest appearances from a range of contributors to the volume, the episode features an interview with Dr Ruth Heholt, editor in chief of Revenant. Ruth Heholt is...