Academics from across the globe are engaged in intriguing, insightful and thought-provoking research spanning multiple disciplines. 

Their work demonstrates the breadth of theoretical approaches and range of methodologies that can be taken in researching funerary practices. These pages aim to facilitate networking between scholars, to encourage active dialogue and collaboration. Click on each name to find out more.

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Dr Gian Luca Amadei

Royal College of Art / UK

Dr Gian Luca Amadei is an independent academic researcher and internationally recognised design and architectural journalist.

Dr Carlton Basmaijan

Iowa State University

My cemetery-related research focuses on how burial grounds in the US have been planned for and managed since World War II.

Dr Eglė Bazaraitė

Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Vilnius Academy of Arts, Lithuania

I am currently lecturing at the Faculty of Architecture in Vilnius Gediminas Technical University and Interior Design Department in Vilnius Academy of Arts (Lithuania), and working on a monograph “Už miesto, miške” to be published in 2023 by LAPAS.

Close-up picture of purple flowers

Dr Philippa Chun

Rowan University and Johns Hopkins University, USA

My research unites death studies, literature, and the history of medicine. My dissertation explored how nineteenth-century authors of color used corpses in fiction to resist the weaponization of biopolitics, scientific racism, and racial terror against Black communities in this period.

Dr Chris Coutts

Florida State University, US

Dr Coutts is a Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Florida State University (FSU).

French cemetery

Louis Dall’aglio

Environnement Ville Société (UMR 5600), France

My research focuses on the influence of ecological thought and practices in the evolution of the French cemeteries, particularly from a technical and anthropological point of view.

Close-up picture of purple flowers

Dr Helen Frisby

University of Bath, UK

My research interests focus on popular funerary customs, past and present, and I’m interested in cemeteries as spaces (or places?) where death and dying are constructed, performed and contested.

Marie Fruiquière

National School of Architecture of Strasbourg (AMUP UR7309)/University of Strasbourg, France

Marie Fruiquière is an architect and engineer in Town and Country Planning. She is a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Strasbourg/ENSAS and the College of Architecture and Urban Planning/CAUP of Tongji University in Shanghai (China).

Cemetery in St Petersburg

Dr Pavel Grabalov

Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), Norway

Pavel Grabalov is an urban researcher with a PhD degree from the Faculty of Landscape and Society, Norwegian University of Life Sciences.

Crest of the University of Melbourne

Samuel Holleran

University of Melbourne, Australia

Samuel Holleran is a PhD Candidate at the University of Melbourne, where he is examining public participation in the reimagination of urban cemeteries with the DeathTech Research Team.

Close-up picture of purple flowers

Fran Flett Hollinrake

St Magnus Cathedral, Orkney

I work for a local authority, and I am the Visitor Services Officer for the medieval cathedral of St Magnus. I’m interested in historic mortuary practices, including intra-mural church burials.

Book cover of 'Houses of Life'

Dr Joachim Jacobs

Germany

Joachim Jacobs is a landscape architect, who has specialised in conservation and restoration projects including designing an extension to the Jewish cemetery in Grunewald.

Close-up picture of ivy on a headstone

Robyn S. Lacy

Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, NL, Canada

My research explores death and burial through the lens of historical archaeology, with a focus on the construction and organization of the colonial burial landscape in northeast North America.

Close-up picture of ivy on a headstone

Dr Georgina Laragy

Trinity College Dublin / Dublin Cemeteries Trust - Ireland

Primarily interested in nineteenth and twentieth century histories of death and burial in Ireland, specifically with reference to suicide and institutional burial but beyond that as well.

Close-up picture of purple flowers

Dr Linda Levitt

Stephen F. Austin State University, US

My primary research sits at the intersection of memory studies and media, considering media’s role in shaping understandings of the past.

Dr Louise Loe

Oxford Archaeology/University of Oxford

Holding a BA in Archaeology and a PhD in Biological Anthropology from the University of Bristol, Louise has over 20 years’ experience in the excavation and analysis of human remains from archaeological sites.

Close-up picture of ivy on a headstone

Janine Marriott

Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust

Janine is the Public Engagement Manager at Arnos Vale Cemetery, Bristol (UK).

Cremated remains urns in the Netherlands

Dr Brenda Mathijssen

University of Groningen, Netherlands

My academic expertise concerns the human engagement with dying, death and bereavement in contemporary Europe.

Professor Harold Mytum

University of Liverpool, UK

Harold Mytum has been recording and researching graveyards and cemeteries, and their monuments, for many years in Britain and Ireland, USA, Gibraltar and Australia.

Anna Fairley Nielsson

University of Liverpool, UK

My primary research is into the development and management of Liverpool’s nineteenth-century cemeteries and reflections of aspects of identity through the memorials in them.

Further publications

Search the bibliography for other publications by these scholars