Episodes

  • Evie King on 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

    Evie King on 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
    Oct 1 2024

    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 to the seaside and going part-time she has had more time for writing and has completed her first book - Ashes to Admin - about her job arranging council funerals under her pen name. She is currently working on a second.

    The book mentioned in the introduction by podcast co-host Dr Renske Visser and the podcast’s first ever guest Professor Erica Borgstrom is Critical Approaches to Death and Bereavement. Discount code: SMA23

    How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?

    To cite this episode, you can use the following citation:

    King, E. (2024) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 October 2024. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.27141447 What next?

    Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts!


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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • 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

    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
    Sep 1 2024

    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, gender, and community mobilization with grassroots and international development organizations. She has contributed chapters in academic publications on tribal health and healing rituals. Her writings have appeared in leading Indian and international publications and address a range of issues, including, health, human rights, the environment and culture. She has also written a non-fiction title for children. The Final Farewell: Understanding the Last Rites and Rituals of India’s Major Faiths, is her debut non-fiction book with Harper Collins, India.

    How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?

    To cite this episode, you can use the following citation:

    Dewan, M. (2024) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 September 2024. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.26886349

    What next?

    Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts!

    Got a question? Get in touch.
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    54 mins
  • Professor Nina Lykke on queer & feminist death studies; posthumanism; the more than human; necropolitics; philosophy, atheism & death; vibrant death; mourning, & ongoing relationships with the dead

    Professor Nina Lykke on queer & feminist death studies; posthumanism; the more than human; necropolitics; philosophy, atheism & death; vibrant death; mourning, & ongoing relationships with the dead
    Aug 1 2024

    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 broadly for many years.

    She is also a poet and writer, and co-founder, in 2016, of the international Network for Queer Death Studies.

    Current research interests: queering of cancer, death, and mourning in posthuman, queerfemme, new-materialist, decolonial, eco-critical and spiritual-material perspectives; feminist and femme-inist theory; intersectional methodologies; autophenomenography; poetic writing; eco-critical storytelling.

    She has recently published articles in journals such as Australian Feminist Studies; NORA; Catalyst; Environmental Humanities; Social Identities; Kerb Journal; Lambda Nordica; Forum+; Women, Gender and Research and Somatechnics. She is also author of numerous monographs such as Cosmodolphins (2000), Feminist Studies (2010), Vibrant Death (2022) and Feminist Reconfigurings of Alien Encounters (2024, with K.Aglert and L.Henrksen).

    How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?

    To cite this episode, you can use the following citation:

    Lykke, N. (2024) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 August 2024. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.26422072


    What next?

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    1 hr and 10 mins
  • DeathxDesignxCulture: Radical Re-Imaginings for End of Life Promo!

    DeathxDesignxCulture: Radical Re-Imaginings for End of Life Promo!
    Jul 22 2024

    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 LIFE conference.
    The conference seeks to open discursive space for ‘traditional’ as well as practice-based and practice-led research to critically reflect on the role of design as it relates to death, dying, and disposal at individual, community, and broader cultural levels, and to suggest radical alternatives for the future. 
    With a focus on interdisciplinarity, the conference aims to support knowledge exchange between researchers within the social sciences, the humanities, and design. Design is positioned as an expanded field inviting contributions from subject areas including, but not limited to: graphic design; multidisciplinary design; architecture; digital design; fashion design; and product design.
    A multi-modal approach will stretch the conventions of a conference format, incorporating experience design; exhibitions and pedagogic interventions; university-industry knowledge transfer; and opportunities for traditional academic papers.
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    2 mins
  • Dr Hannah Gould on death and the dead in Japan, changing death rituals, necromaterials, death rites, caring for the dead, death technologies, vertical burial and ethnographies of things.

    Dr Hannah Gould on death and the dead in Japan, changing death rituals, necromaterials, death rites, caring for the dead, death technologies, vertical burial and ethnographies of things.
    Jul 1 2024
    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 stuff.” Dr. Gould has degrees from The University of Melbourne and Oxford University, and completed her doctoral research into the transformation of contemporary Japanese death ritual. Dr Gould currently serves as the President of The Australian Death Studies Society and holds the Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellowship for the project “Mobile Mortality: Transnational Futures of Deathcare in the Asia Pacific”. Dr Gould is also the author of When Death Falls Apart (University of Chicago Press, 2023) and co-editor of Aromas of Asia (Penn State University Press, 2023). Alongside academic research and publishing, she facilitates and engages in public and media-based conversations about death, dying, religion and technology, and is an advocate for more equitable systems of deathcare. The Book from this week’s Introduction Radical Mindfulness by James K. Rowe, Associate Professor at the School of Environmental Studies in the University of Victoria examines the root causes of injustice, asking why inequalities along the lines of race, class, gender, and species continue to exist. Specifically, James Rowe examines fear of death as a root cause of systemic inequalities and proposes a more embodied approach to social change as a solution. How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists? To cite this episode, you can use the following citation: Gould, H. (2024) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 July 2024. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.26139067 What next? Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts! Got a question? Get in touch.
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    56 mins
  • Dr Juliet Hooker on Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss, language and social justice, democracy, and killings by the police in the US

    Dr Juliet Hooker on Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss, language and social justice, democracy, and killings by the police in the US
    May 31 2024

    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 theory. Before coming to Brown, she was a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of multiple award-winning books, including Race and the Politics of Solidarity (Oxford, 2009), Theorizing Race in the Americas: Douglass, Sarmiento, Du Bois, and Vasconcelos (Oxford, 2017), Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss (Princeton, 2023), and editor of Black and Indigenous Resistance in the Americas: From Multiculturalism to Racist Backlash (Lexington Books, 2020). Theorizing Race in the Americas was awarded the American Political Science Association’s 2018 Ralph Bunche Book Award for the best work in ethnic and cultural pluralism and the 2018 Best Book Award of the Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section. Black Grief/White Grievance was named a Seminary Co-Op Notable Book of the Year, a Library Journal Best Social Science Book of the Year, and a finalist for the PROSE Award in Government and Politics from the Association of American Publishers in 2023.

    Find out more about Juliet at https://juliethooker.com/

    How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?

    To cite this episode, you can use the following citation:

    Hooker, J. (2024) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 June 2024. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.25941190


    What next?

    Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts! Got a question? Get in touch.
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Dr. Yasmin Gunaratnam on transnational dying, end-of-life care, being a carer, education with end-of-life-care professionals, art methods, anti-colonial death studies, genocide, yoga, and ADHD

    Dr. Yasmin Gunaratnam on transnational dying, end-of-life care, being a carer, education with end-of-life-care professionals, art methods, anti-colonial death studies, genocide, yoga, and ADHD
    May 2 2024

    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 of inequality and injustice are produced, lived with and remade and how these processes create new forms of local and global inclusion and dispossession. Yasmin is also a yoga teacher, exploring contemplative social justice and embodied pedagogies. Her publications include 'Researching Race and Ethnicity: methods, knowledge and power' (2003, Sage), ‘Death and the Migrant’ (2013, Bloomsbury Academic) and the co-authored book ‘Go Home? The Politics of Immigration Controversies’ (2017, Manchester University Press). She tweets @YasminGun


    The Book in the Introduction

    The book introduced in this episode is Youth and Suicide in American Cinema: Context, Causes, and Consequences (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) by Alessandra Seggi, MA, PhD, Fulbright Scholar and faculty at Villanova University, Department of Sociology and Criminology. Find out more at: https://www.alessandraseggi.com/ How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?

    To cite this episode, you can use the following citation:

    Gunaratnam, Y. (2024) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 2 May 2024. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.25735434

    What next?

    Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts! Got a question? Get in touch.
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    1 hr and 36 mins
  • M. F. (Mike) Alvarez on suicide, mental health and illness, the ethics of autoethnography, fine art, reflexive writing, creative writing, interdisciplinarity and biases in suicidolodgy and the academy

    M. F. (Mike) Alvarez on suicide, mental health and illness, the ethics of autoethnography, fine art, reflexive writing, creative writing, interdisciplinarity and biases in suicidolodgy and the academy
    Apr 1 2024

    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 and Renewal (Routledge, 2023). He is also lead author of A Plague for Our Time: Dying and Death in the Age of COVID-19 (McFarland, forthcoming), and lead editor of Suicide in Popular Media and Culture (Bristol UP, in progress). Dr. Alvarez is a founding member of the National Communication Association’s Death and Dying Division. He teaches courses in mental health communication, end of life communication, film and media studies, and autoethnography. How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists? To cite this episode, you can use the following citation:

    Alvarez. M. F. (2024) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 April 2024. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.25516474

    What next?

    Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts! Got a question? Get in touch.

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    1 hr