Category: Academic
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Death Glitch
Digital remains are a challenge in terms of whether they can be passed on, or whether ownership solely lies with the deceased owner. Recently a judge in the Netherlands denied a widower access to his late wife’s Facebook private messages; it was argued that the people who were chatting with his wife were entitled to…
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A data-driven analysis of cemeteries and social reform in Paris, 1804-1924
Our eyes have been on Paris for the past couple of weeks. Every Olympics I discover sports I did not know existed (speed climbing, I’m looking at you). Every time I am in awe of people’s sportsmanship and amazed how well the Netherlands always seems to do in these events (Finland, sadly, took home zero…
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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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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…
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All that was not her
All that was not her by anthropologist Todd Meyers is unlike any other ethnographic account I have ever read. The text provides a wonderful blend of creative and poetic writing. The writing is playful yet thought-provoking, akin thoughts written out in fieldnotes. The fragmented writing style underscores the notion that researchers never really fully understand…
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The Day I Die: the untold story of assisted dying in America
Assisted dying is a topic that has always fascinated me, for various reasons. Firstly, the language used and the phrases to describe ‘assisted’ deaths reveal a lot of moral assumptions: euthanasia, assisted dying, assisted suicide, death with dignity are but a few. None of these are neutral terms. The term I use myself, euthanasia, betrays…
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Dying in Full Detail
Having recently edited a Special Issue on Death and the Screen for Revenant (to be published later this year), with podcast co-host, friend, and all-round wonderful person Bethan Michael-Fox, I have found myself delving deeper in the topic of mediated death, death in popular culture, and distinctions between ‘real’ and ‘imagined’ deaths. Both fiction and non-fiction…
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Still Life With Bones
In Still Life With Bones: Field Notes on Forensics and Loss social anthropologist Alexa Hagerty reflects on her fieldwork and research in Guatemala and Argentina. She unpacks and, quite literally, uncovers the long-lasting impact of the violent atrocities that took place in both countries. During Guatemala’s 30-year conflict over 200.000 people were killed. In Argentina…
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Dying to Eat
You can tell a lot about cultures, or countries by their food habits. The way various groups deal with death and dying equally tells plenty about social organisation, beliefs and rituals. If you combine academic interest in the two, you get something like the appetizing edited collection Dying to Eat: Cross-cultural perspectives on food, death…
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Grief Demystified
Grief Demystified is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in academic theories around grief. I have commented in the past that a lot of memoirs and grief books, and personal written accounts on grief and bereavement, do not seem to engage with the literature that is out there. Or, do not seem to engage…
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The Craft of Dying
“I am arguing that in the last several hundred years, more importantly in the last fifty years, and even more importantly in the last twenty years, conditions have emerged with sufficient strength to produce in the modern world a new kind of dying – prolonged dying- which relatively large numbers of persons have confronted, are…
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Narratives of Covid: Loss, dying and death during COVID-19
This month I am taking part in Memoir March. Memoirs are an interesting genre of books. Memoirs are based on people’s life stories but memories are not fixed entities, instead feelings towards, and interpretations of, memories might change over time. Furthermore, whilst memoirs are based on ‘true events’, sometimes the truth needs to bend to…
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The Silly Thing: Shaping the Story of Life & Death
This month I am taking part in Memoir March. Memoirs are an interesting genre of books. Memoirs are based on people’s life stories but memories are not fixed entities, instead feelings towards, and interpretations of, memories might change over time. Furthermore, whilst memoirs are based on ‘true events’, sometimes the truth needs to bend to…
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Narratives of Parental Death, Dying and Bereavement: a kind of haunting
This month I am taking part in Memoir March. Memoirs are an interesting genre of books. Memoirs are based on people’s life stories but memories are not fixed entities, instead feelings towards, and interpretations of, memories might change over time. Furthermore, whilst memoirs are based on ‘true events’, sometimes the truth needs to bend to…
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Written in Bone
This February I have decided to read books around a certain theme namely: Forensics. So welcome to Forensic February! The books I will write about in the remainder of the month all have something to do with Forensics (they have little to do with February, but I love alliteration, so you might also want to…
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Beyond the Veil
Beyond the veil: reflexive studies of death and dying is a wonderful edited collection I encourage any death scholar to read. I will be the first to admit, however, that the price of these kinds of books will make it inaccessible for wider readership in the general population (and admittedly also within academic circles) but…
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Sudden Death and the Myth of CPR
June 12 was a historic day: Finland played its first ever match in a European Championship. In Helsinki people were buzzing (in their own homes, quietly, per Finnish style). Shops were filled with scarves, shirts, hats, and other types of Finnish memorabilia. Covid may have made the Finnish people wait an extra year, but they…
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365 days past the traffic lights
Originally published 26 April 2021 This memoir, written by twentysomething Rose Yavneh Taylor, explores the impact and messiness of losing a parent in young adulthood. She argues that while there are plenty of self-help and other books available about grief and bereavement, few focus on the experiences of people in this particular stage of life….