The Death Studies Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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

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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

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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 research and reading lists?

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

The Death Studies Podcast (2023) Difficult Death, Dying and the Dead on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 December 2023. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.24715908

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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 with Disaster in Japan: Responses to the Flight JL123 Crash, and ‘Truth and Limitations: Japanese Media and Disasters’ (in Handbook of Japanese Media and Popular Culture in Transition), ‘Japanese Disaster Narratives of the Early Twenty-First Century: Continuity and Change’ (published in French in Ebisu Études japonaises), and ‘Disaster Narratives by Design: Is Japan Different?’ (International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters).

He is also the author of the novels Hijacking Japan, Tokyo 20/20 Vision, and FOUR.

Homepage: http://hoodcp.wordpress.com

Twitter: @HoodCP

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

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

Hood, C. (2023) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 December 2023. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.24711444

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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 feminist modes of creation, space-making, and care. She teaches at the Metanoia Institute in London and is a trustee for Mslexia: For Women Who Write. She is author of How the Hiding Seek (2018) and Unruly Therapeutic: Black Feminist Writings and Practices in Living Room, published by W.W. Norton in February 2023.

She is currently based in London.  

How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists? To cite this episode, you can use the following citation:

Taylor, F. (2023) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 November 2023. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.24475006

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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 from the Haunted Landscapes conference.

Who is Angeline? 

Angeline Morrison is a singer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who explores traditional song with a deep love, respect and curiosity. Angeline mostly makes music in the genres of wyrd folk and psych folk, her work infused with elements of soul music, literature, ‘60s beat pop sounds, folklore, myth and the supernatural.

With a feral approach, a handmade sonic aesthetic and a belief in the importance of tenderness, Angeline’s original compositions and re-stitchings of traditional songs focus on storytelling and the small things that often go unnoticed. Sounds like solitude, memory, nostalgia, a rainy walk amongst trees...

In July 2022, Angeline was announced as the fourth winner of the prestigious Christian Raphael Prize at Cambridge Folk Festival, which generously supports the development of emerging talent in the folk genre. In December 2022 The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience was voted No 1 Folk album of the year in The Guardian. 
Her album The Sorrow Songs: Folk Songs of Black British Experience (released October 2022, Topic Records) is a work of re-storying. The historic Black presence in the UK dates back to at least Roman times, yet is often hidden, forgotten or unacknowledged. The populations of enslaved African people and their descendants in the USA have their bodies of folk song, which are vitally important for containing histories, expressing feelings, giving voice and claiming presence… but the Black ancestors of the UK have no equivalent body of song. The Sorrow Songs begins to address this. It is a gift to the forgotten Black ancestors of these islands, and to the folk community here today. The album uses history and imagination to tell stories of UK Black ancestors in the sonic style of UK traditional and folk music.

What is the Haunted Landscapes conference?

Find out more about the conferences produced in association with Falmouth University’s Dark Economies Research Group here.

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

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

Morrison, A. (2023) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 October 2023. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.24226096

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

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 movement is central to his work.

He opened The Green Funeral Company with Claire in 2000 and the company is now among the country’s best-known eco-friendly funeral directors.

In 2012, they won Joint Best Funeral Director at the first Good Funeral Awards and were described as ‘The best undertakers of all time, by a country mile’ by Good Funeral Guide author, Charles Cowling. Ru and Claire spoke at TEDx Totnes on death, grief, ritual and radical funerals. In 2021, Claire left the company and Ru continues with a new colleague.

Callender,b Phillips, Cauty & Drummond: Undertakers to the Underworld was established as a partnership between The Green Funeral Company and The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (KLF) in 2017. 

Find out more at Ru’s website here.

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

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

Callender, R. (2023) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 September 2023. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.24071724

What next?

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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, co-president of the International Gothic Association.

His books include Gothic Cinema (Routledge, 2020), Twenty-First-Century Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (Edinburgh University Press, co-edited with Maisha Wester, 2019), Horror Film and Affect (Routledge, 2016), Horror: A Literary History (British Library Publishing, 2016) and Body Gothic (University of Wales Press, 2014).

Xavier is chief editor of the international academic book series ‘Horror Studies’ and a founding member of the Horror Studies special interest group of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies.

He is currently working on the forthcoming edited collection Graveyard Gothic (Manchester University Press) and on a new monograph entitled Contemporary Body Horror on Page and Screen (Cambridge University Press).

Although by no means a thanatologist, Xavier has strong interests in adjacent areas.

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

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

Aldana Reyes, X. (2023) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 2 August 2023. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.23823135

What next?

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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 through which the living encounter the dead – not only spiritualist mediums, but also angels, social media, dark tourism, human remains in museums, music, ancestor veneration, and memory. He is currently writing about mortality in the age of the climate and ecological crisis. 

What is CDAS?

CDAS is an internationally recognised research centre focusing on the interdisciplinary social aspects of death, dying and bereavement at the University of Bath. https://www.bath.ac.uk/research-centres/centre-for-death-society/

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

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

Walter, T. (2023) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 2 July 2023. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.23615262

What next?

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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 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 anthropologist, Caroline is an advisory board member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and between December 2021 and August this year, she was Director of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Prevention of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, in the UK parliament. She holds a BSc in Anthropology (University College London), MSc in Forensic Anthropology (Bradford University), MA in Visual Anthropology (University of Kent), and a PhD in Social Anthropology (University of Kent).

She is currently a Lecturer in Social Anthropology, with a focus on Human Rights, at the University of Sussex, UK, and an Associate Research fellow at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

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

Bennett, C. (2023) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 June 2023. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.23309723

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