The Death Studies Podcast

Who is Jane? Jane McCarthy  is an English sociologist who has worked for many decades across various disciplines to focuson ‘family’, childhood, and relationality. In the last 25 years,since the death of her husband when their daughter was aged 5, she has built on this earlier work to explore death and its continuing aftermath in the everyday relational lives of the living, alongside ‘family troub...

What's is this episode about?   In this episode, hear Professor Joanna Stalnaker on death and philosophy, writing at the end of life, last works, Enlightenmentthinking, women and philosophy in the Enlightenment, teaching, pedagogy, and her experience of discovering she had a brain tumour causing an unexplained obsession with Harry Styles and fan fiction Who is Joanna? Joanna Stalnaker is the a...

Who is J.T. Welsch?   J. T. Welsch is a writer and academic born in the US andbased in the UK, where he teaches at the University of York. He is the author of several books of and about poetry, including Orchids (2010), The Hell Creek Anthology (2015) and The Selling and Self-Regulation of Contemporary Poetry (2020). He also edited the anthology of migrant poetry Wretched Strangers (2018) with Ágn...

What's the episode about?   In this episode, hear about an event on Love and Loss: A DayAt Arnos Vale Historic Garden Cemetery, Bristol discussing love, romance, sex, death, culture, prison writing, slow suicide, creative writing, obituaries, epitaphs and more. You will listen to a range of academic research love, romance, death, grief and loss, all based or connected to the South West of Engl...

Dead Women and Gendered Death in Visual Culture for MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture   Co-edited by Devaleena Kundu, Bethan-Michael-Fox, and Khyati Tripathi, Dead Women and Gendered Death in Visual Culture dives into the factors behind the deeply genderedrepresentations of death and dead bodies in visual culture.   In a world dominated by the visual, the female dead body is glamorised and eroticis...

What's the episode about?   In this episode, hear Dr Molly Conisbee on social histories of death and mourning, liberation thanatology, lessons fromthe history of death, walking tours and being a bereavement councillor Who is Molly?   Molly Conisbee is a social historian and visiting research fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath.   She has a PhD from the Universi...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Professor Sandra Ruiz on poetry, writing, form, Brown Study, Ricanness, anticoloniality, grief-work, walking and being with the dead, and minoritarian aesthetics Who is Sandra? Sandra Ruiz is the author of  Ricanness: Enduring Time in Anticolonial Performance; Left Turns in Brown Study; and Tears for Tears: Aesthetics in Grief Minor.  Ruizis  the...

What's the episode about?  In this episode, hear Ruth E. Toulson on the necropolitics of the ordinary, dying and death in Singapore, anthropology, burials, funeral directors and morticians Who is Ruth? At Johns Hopkins, Ruth E. Toulson is a lecturer for the  Master of Arts in Museum Studies  program. Toulson is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on the dead body, and death’s...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Professor Beverley Clack on philosophyof religion, failure, loss, neoliberalism, thinking about death and not freaking out, women, gender and good public conversations about difficult topics   Who is Bev?  Beverley Clack is Visiting Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford. She is funded by the Westminster College Oxford Trust to research and...

Cole Imperi  on grief, thanatology, shadow loss, and non-clinical tools in support of those experiencing loss and grief. What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Cole Imperi on grief, thanatology, shadow loss, and non-clinical tools in support of those experiencing loss and grief. Who is Cole? Cole Imperi is a thanatologist, award-winning author, and researcher whose work focuses on the...

What's the episode about?   In this episode, hear Nina Vaswani on young men and grief during in imprisonment, childhood bereavement, masculinities and grief, trauma informed practice, comics for education and research, disenfranchised grief, grieving a death you have caused, and public health responses to grief   Who is Nina?  Nina is Senior Research Fellow at the Children and Young People’s C...

What's the episode about?   In this episode, hear Joshua Hurtardo Hurtardo on postmortal futures, future studies, de-growth, immortality imaginaries, future collective death, Westworld, and promoting your work in 2026   Who is Joshua ? Joshua Hurtado Hurtado is a Mexican interdisciplinary researcher, currently finalising his PhD research at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He studied Internati...

What's the episode about?   In this episode, hear Professor Douglas Davies on thedevelopment of death studies, ‘words against death’, the ‘dividual’, religion, ‘sacred secrets’, the ‘opacity of the self’ and the ‘curated everything’, keeping a dream diaries since 1979, the over-optimism of posthumanism, wealth inequality, & the privilege of intellectuals as ‘people who think’. Who is Dougl...

 What's the episode about?   In this episode, hear Dr Jessica Young on assisteddying, the New Zealand End of Life Choice Bill, culturally responsive research, end of life care and decision making, and sociological approaches. Who is Jessica? Dr Jessica Young  is a Senior Research Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Auckland, and an adjunct senior lecturer in the Austr...

What's the episode about? In this episode, get an overview of the 2025 Death, Dying and Disposal Conference held in Utrecht in the Netherlands   What was the conference about?  The below information was taken from the conference website. 'Death is political and performs the political. This is evident not only in death itself, but also in the dead (who can become political actors), their bo...

What's the episode about?  In this episode, hear Kaylee Alexander discuss the digital humanities, being a research data librarian, visual culture, cemeteries, French cemetery laws, cemetery sculpture, ethically sound data visualisation and survival bias   Who is Kaylee? Dr. Kaylee P. Alexander is a Research Data Librarian at the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library.   She holds a P...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Patricia MacCormack on philosophy, death activism, veganism, antinatalism, necrosexuality, the Anthropocene, dudebros in academia, and a loving and vitalist relationship to death Who is Patricia? Professor Patricia MacCormack is Professor of Continental Philosophy. She is the author of  Cinesexuality  (Routledge2008) and  Posthuman Ethics  (Routl...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Dr. Terri Daniel on toxic theology, healthy theology, complicated grief, being a non-religious chaplain, hospice and loss. Who is Terri? Dr. Terri Daniel is an inter-spiritual hospice chaplain, end-of-life educator, and grief counselor certified in death, dying and bereavement by the  Association of Death Education and Counseling  and in family-f...

What's the episode about?   In this episode, hear Sydney Campbell on Medical Assistance in Dying for mature minors, children’s participation, policy, assisted dying, childism, participatory research and end-of-life contexts  Who is Sydney?  Dr. Sydney Campbell is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie University.   She completed her PhD in the Institute of Health Policy,...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Claire Nally on literature, Goth, Steampunk, death memoirs, representations of dead women, death positive libraries & working in academia Who is Claire?  Claire Nally is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at Northumbria University, UK, where sheresearches Irish Studies, Neo-Victorianism, Gender and Subcultures. She published her...

What's the episode about? In this episode, get an overview of the 2025 Edited Collection Death and Institutions: Processes, Places and the Past   What is the Book About? Institutions play a crucial role in shaping experiences of end-of-life care, dying, death, body disposal and bereavement. However, there has been little holistic or multidisciplinary research in this area, with studies typical...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear highlights from the 7th International Symposium of the Death Online Research Network (DORS#7) and Tamara Kneese on digital death, genAI, ethics, moving from academia to the private sector, data, society & collective action What was DORS#7? The 7th International Symposium of the Death Online ResearchNetwork (DORS#7) on October 3rd–5th, 2024 wa...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Todd Meyers on grief, anthropology, entanglements, addiction, language, overdose death, opioid crisis, life’s incoherence and knowing your limits Who is Todd? Todd began his career as a painter, earning a BFA in studio from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  His interests slowly moved to the history of medicine, public health, and anthr...

What's the episode about?   In this episode, hear Michele Aaron discuss filmmaking and end of life care, hospice documentary, death and LGBTQIA+ communities, palliative care, film practice, ethics and visual culture and dying Who is Michele?  Michele completed her BA in English Literature at Queen Mary’s (or QMW as it was then) and both my MA, (in Culture and Social Change) and PhD (in contemporar...

What's the episode about?   In this episode, hear live recordings and interviews from the DEATHxDESIGNxCULTURE conference at Falmouth University in September 2024. The episode features discussion of death, culture, older age rational suicide (OARS), film, design, grief, knitting, jewellery and memento mori, material culture, museums, and memorial reefs   What was DEATHxDESIGNxCULTURE?  DEATHxDESIG...