Trained as an anthropologist, I am professor at the Haute école de travail social et de la santé Lausanne (HETSL | HES-SO). For more than 20 years, I have been involved in the field of Death Studies in relation with anthropological frameworks and social work professional activities. In this context, part of my work is related to the observation, documentation, and interpretation of the funerary transition that is occurring in Western societies, notably through both ecological and technoscientific innovations, and on end-of-life and grief issues. I have conducted researches on transitions in cemeteries; on migration, repatriation of dead bodies and the sense of identity; on the requalification and the future of cemeteries, on assisted suicide in Switzerland. More recently, with the break out of the Covid-19 pandemic, I had the opportunity with French and Italian colleagues to document and analyze not only how the funeral sector has been (and still is) impacted by the high increase of mortality rates according to the different waves of the sanitary and social crisis, but also the impact on bereaved families.
Berthod, M.-A., Clavandier, G., Charrier, P., Julier-Costes, M., Pagnamenta, V. & Pillonel, A. (2024) ‘Waves of grief: fluctuating restrictions, treatments of corpses and experiences of loss during the Covid-19 Pandemic’, Anthropological Quarterly, 97:3, 481-510.
Clavandier, G., Berthod, M-A., Charrier, P., Julier-Costes, M., & Pagnamenta, V. (2021) ‘From one body to another. The handling of the deceased during the COVID-19 pandemic, a case study in France and Switzerland’, Human Remains and Violence, 7:2, 41-63.
Berthod, M-A., Stavrianakis, A., Pillonel, A. & Castelli Dransart, D.A. (2019) ‘Images of terminality: anticipations of dying with assistance in Switzerland’, Revista M. Estudos Sobre a Morte, os Mortos o Morrer, 4:7, 45-59.