The Death Studies Podcast

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 th...

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 Univers...

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.  ...

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...

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...

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.   Wh...

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, a formerly enslaved African buried in Hartlepool, as well as pet loss. Plus, highlights...

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...

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 Metropo...

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  (2...

Dr. Caroline Bennett on the Cambodian Genocide, mass graves, the Khmer Rouge regime, the identification of bodies, DNA identification, human remains, genocide research, anthropology, ethnography, notions of haunting, karma, post-genocide and getting involved in research into genocide. Caroline Bennett is a socio-cultural anthropologist, who works on the Cambodian genocide, with a particular focus...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Dr. Hazel Marzetti discuss suicide, LBGT+ mental health, suicide in/as politics, qualitative health research and critical suicide studies as well as collective care and peer support in death studies research. Who is Hazel?  Hazel Marzetti is a post-doctoral Research Associate in the University of Edinburgh’s School of Health in Social Sciences. S...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Dr Jeremy Cohen on new religious movements, radical-longevity, immortality, transhumanism, ethnography and cryonics, as well as tree planting, music and the Salem Witch Trials and mass hysteria, anthropology and the project Talk Death Daily Who is Jeremy?  Jeremy Cohen is an Assistant Professor at McMaster, in the Department of Religious Studies...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Professor Helen Wheatley discuss death in film and television, corpses, grief and loss on screen, the Gothic, assisted suicide on television, haunting on TV and cultural trauma, as well as death in children’s television and live death on screen. Helen also discusses her extensive work with television archives and communities in Coventry, UK.  Who...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Dr Esther Ramsay-Jones discuss palliative psychotherapy, grief work, writing about grief, and psychotherapy and maternal figures in dementia care. Esther discusses her mother’s death and her experiences of writing memoir. Who is Esther? Esther Ramsay-Jones is a practising psychodynamic psychotherapist and Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear a breakdown of the Death and the Screen Special Issue of Revenant and editor-in-chief Professor Ruth Heholt on ghosts, haunting, the Gothic, Catherine Crowe, the supernatural and starting a journal This special episode accompanies a Special Issue of the academic journal Revenant focused on Death and the Screen. You can find the issue and the jour...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Jason Danely discuss ageing, Japan, loss, ageing subjectivities unwitnessed death and anthropology. Who is Jason? Jason Danely is a Reader in Anthropology at Oxford Brookes University, where he is the Chair of the Healthy Ageing and Care Research Innovation and Knowledge Exchange Network. Having studied Comparative Religions and Asian Studies bef...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Salena Godden discuss poetry, her book Mrs Death Misses Death, depicting death as a Black woman, memoir, and talking about death Who is Salena? Salena Godden FRSL is an award-winning author, memoirist, essayist, poet and broadcaster of Jamaican heritage based in London. In 2021 Canongate published her highly acclaimed debut novel Mrs Death Misses...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Monday Gosling on psychotherapy, grief experienced by adults and couples who were bereaved as children, her experience of bereavement as a child, the loss of mothers and delayed and prolonged grief. Who is Mandy? Mandy Gosling is a UKCP and BACP accredited psychotherapist, researcher and author, specialising in unresolved grief experienced by adu...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Professor Gayle Letherby discuss reproductive loss, auto/biographical methodologies, loss and bereavement, childlessness, and academic and creative writing practices approaches. Who is Gayle? Gayle Letherby is a Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Plymouth and Visiting Professor at the University of Greenwich. She is a teacher, m...

What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Dr Jillian A. Tullis discuss end-of-life care and communication, resisting the hospice narrative, autoethnography and its ethical implications, truth in qualitative research, spirituality and cancer care and innovative teaching approaches. Who is Jillian? Dr. Jillian A. Tullis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies a...