This paper asks how the socio-legal precedents in early Islam pertaining to female mourning and participation in funerals have been interpreted in the contemporary period by Muslims in diaspora. Specifically, it examines the practices of participation of women, primarily of South Asian and North African heritage, at Muslim funerals in Britain and France. Doctrinal sources established in early Islam recommend that women do not participate in burial rites at the cemetery, as ‘emotional’ manifestations of grief at the graveside may disturb the deceased. […]

As climate change intensifies, burial grounds are increasingly vulnerable to inundation and erosion through flood events. This paper takes a speculative journey through the possible futures of a cemetery at flood risk, asking how memory might persist and remembrance be sustained when the material is submerged. Drawing on emerging climate change policy and practice, the paper engages with the notion of the deceased ‘dying twice’: first through biological death, and again through the loss of memorial spaces, […]

This is the title of a book on which the authors have worked since 2018, and which will be published at the end of April 2026. Both authors have been involved for decades with the study and conservation of cemeteries, and with English Heritage/Historic England as staff or committee members. Hitherto, despite increasing academic interest, and the proliferation of Friends’ associations devoted to particular cemeteries, many of them producing significant new research, there has no comprehensive study of the history of the British cemetery. […]

In 2011, a sign was posted in a West Cork graveyard informing the people who lived there that they would no longer be able to bury their dead without professional, certified intervention. This local government edict was not well received by the community. Despite the extensive legal and bureaucratic framework governing burial practices, rural communities continue to mobilise locally to perform gravedigging as a voluntary, unpaid collective act. In doing so, this case study of a small, […]

Cemetery managers are tasked with ensuring the dignified and lawful handling of human remains while maintaining a workplace that meets high standards of occupational safety. For the bereaved and the society, cemeteries function as important spaces of burial and remembrance, shaped by cultural and religious conceptions of permanence and eternal rest. In Sweden, the sanctity of graves is protected by law; however, graves may be reused once a minimum of 25 years have passed since burial. […]

Throughout the nineteenth century, a number of Protestant cemeteries in Italy – popularly, and at times euphemistically, designated as English cemeteries – evolved into transnational cultural landscapes whose significance extended well beyond their original function as burial grounds for foreign and confessional minorities. Increasingly integrated into broader circuits of cultural mobility and Grand Tour itineraries, these spaces developed into sites of encounter, contemplation, and embodied engagement for travellers and curious visitors alike. Anglo-American women’s travelogues played a decisive role in shaping their reception as places to be visited, […]

Centring the words of visitors to Crossbones graveyard in summer 2025, this short film explores why people choose to visit this unconsecrated burial ground, now a garden of remembrance, and their responses to the space. Using video, still images, site-recorded audio, and music, it is presented alongside a selection of tactile handmade objects to create a multi-sensory experience of place while considering the gendered narratives in the memorialisation of historically marginalised lives.

This paper examines how cemeteries are maintained, governed, and socially understood under different political, administrative, and institutional systems, with a particular focus on the post socialist Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. Drawing on Tony Walter’s typology of funeral organization – commercial, municipal, religious, and cooperative – the study explores how these models manifest in practice and how historical regimes continue to shape contemporary management. In the Czech Republic, cemetery care is predominantly municipal, a system deeply influenced by the legacy of the communist period, […]

Before the Anatomy Act (1832) the legal supply of bodies in Britain for medical dissection and was characterised by endemic and chronic shortfalls. By the late eighteenth century, British anatomists had fostered an extraordinary illegal and clandestine market supplied by ‘Bodysnatchers’ (aka ‘Resurrectionists’), who primarily stole corpses from burial grounds. Societal response to this activity included a commercialisation of grave protection and the emergence – particularly in London – of new products for mortuary security. Based on preliminary findings from my ongoing PhD research on the history of bodysnatching in London, […]

Drawing upon our interviews with frontline cemetery operatives and administrative staff working for an urban local authority in south-western England, here we will explore cemetery staff experiences of providing burial services for a multiethnic, multicultural population and recount some of the challenges encountered and how these are overcome. The Equality Act 2010 and internal industry standards (notably the ICCM’s Charter for the Bereaved) oblige burial authorities to provide a service which recognises user needs, without unfairness or discrimination. […]

International research has shown that depictions of children on early modern funerary monuments were relatively common, with documented examples from England, Germany, Poland, and the Low Countries. These studies indicate that, despite high child mortality rates, families often chose funerary effigies as a meaningful form of commemoration. In Sweden, however, the representation of children in funerary sculpture remains underexplored, and no comprehensive study has yet addressed this material. My research aims to fill this gap by identifying and analysing Swedish examples of child effigies from 1500–1700 to examine their relationship to established international traditions. […]