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What Remains? Life, Death and the Human Art of Undertaking
In What remains? Life, Death and the Human Art of Undertaking Rupert – Ru for short- Callender has written a polemic against the funeral industry. Not being part of his father’s funeral, who died when he was just seven years old, and being sent to boarding school that same year has left a bitter taste….
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Fierce Appetites
Sometimes you read a book that offers you just what you need at that moment in time. Fierce Appetites: loving, losing and living to excess in my present and in the writings of the past by medieval historian Elizabeth Boyle was one of those books for me. Fierce appetites is filled with medieval history, nuggets…
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A Flat Place
I have made many a faux pas when it come to hilly places. Mountainous terrains. When I was 18 I solo-travelled around New Zealand for three months, and upon my arrival in Christchurch I was admiring the mountains, only to be scolded with a “those are hills”. When I came to Bath in 2013 to…
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…And a Time to Die
A person who has been important in the field of Medical Anthropology is Sharon Kaufman. I had the pleasure of meeting her a few years ago at a workshop in Brussels, organised by some of my dear anthropology friends. We all had written and circulated papers beforehand and we spent two days discussing each other’s…
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Wired For Love
Neuroscientist Stephanie Cacioppo works in the field of romantic love and loneliness. In Wired for love: a neuroscientist’s journey through romance, loss and the essence of human connection Cacioppo takes us on a journey to explore the academic field of social neuroscience. Despite having studied the neuroscience of romantic love academically for years, Cacioppo found…
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Women and Death in Film, Television, and News
This week marks International Women’s day. A day that, like all international celebratory/awareness days, brings me ambivalence. Women should be celebrated and supported, but this day feels perfunctory and just another way to make money of the backs of women. The structural inequality and the violence perpetuated against many women is not solved by #InternationalWomensDay…