Research

We undertake academic research and research commissioned by the government, charities and businesses with concern for end-of-life issues and give independent non-partisan policy advice to government and its departments. We also promote co-operation between organisations that deal with end-of-life issues and act as a communication gateway to others working in this field.

Below are a number of research projects we are currently engaged with. More information about all these projects will be available as they progress.

You can also read about past research here.

The Future Cemetery Project

The Future Cemetery Project uses an immersive, interactive, multi-media audience experience to engage heritage site cemetery visitors with the UK's dynamic cultural past. This project will demonstrate what twenty-first century cemeteries can become by using Arnos Vale Cemetery Trust (AVCT) as a platform for academic research by Dr. John Troyer in the University of Bath's Centre for Death and Society and multi-media technology created by Calling the Shots.

Read more about this research project

Understanding and responding to those bereaved through their family members' substance misuse

We are pleased to report that CDAS has been awarded a grant by the ESRC to carry out a large qualitative study of bereavement through substance misuse.

Led by Prof. Tony Walter, Dr. Christine Valentine and Lorna Templeton at the University of Bath, with Prof. Linda Bauld at the University of Stirling, this research will bring about a new understanding of the experiences and concerns of a highly vulnerable yet neglected group of bereaved individuals and develop practice guidelines for those working with, and improve support for, this group.

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Affording a funeral

Dr Kate Woodthorpe will lead a research team examining the process and experience of applying to the Funeral Payments Scheme as part of the Department for Work and Pensions' Social Fund. The team includes Dr Hannah Rumble and Dr Christine Valentine, and will be interviewing applicants to the Scheme in the UK and investigating international comparisons.

Kate says "This is a fantastic opportunity to do some innovative research into an area that has never really been explored academically."

If you have any comments or contributions to make to the project, please contact Kate at k.v.woodthorpe@bath.ac.uk

Read more about this research project

Read the press release for this research project (pdf)

R.I.P. Rest In Peace

R.I.P. as a project (a film, a series of screening events and a companion website:
www.restinpeace.org.uk) will explore Western Culture’s relationship with death, as seen through the professional and personal experiences of an embalmer, Geoff Taylor; and a non-traditional funeral director, Cara Mair; set alongside the cultural and sociological role of embalming as discussed by the sociologists, Dr. John Troyer and Dr. Kate Woodthorpe from the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath. R.I.P. will investigate all aspects of contemporary embalming; including the technical and anatomical processes of this restorative art, as well as the philosophical and sociological significance and meaning of the practice.

R.I.P. will be a unique project, a moving-image based, experimental portrait about contemporary embalming, reconstruction processes, preparation for burial (on Land and Sea) and cremation: offering a fascinating insight into an often hidden art.

Read more about this research project

Future Water Laboratory

The University of Bath has awarded Seed Funding to the development of a Future Water Laboratory, an initiative proposed by a multi-disciplinary team of researchers, including Dr John Troyer from the Department of Social & Policy Sciences. Dr Troyer’s research focuses on new final disposition technologies for the dead body.

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Extending end of life care with social media

Dying is irreducibly physical, but it is also social. Getting frail or terminally ill and then dying disrupts social networks; bereavement entails a restructuring of social engagement, with both the living and the dead. The internet is also, and increasingly, social, so that the term 'social network' is nowadays as likely to refer to online as offline relationships. So how does the internet change social interaction around dying, and does this change the experience of dying, caring or mourning? Tony Walter and Malcolm Johnson are working with colleagues in Bath's Dept of Computer Science and in other universities to develop research projects in this area.

The first project in this series is in collaboration with St. Christopher's Hospice in Sydenham. Rachid Hourizi and Peter Johnson from the Univeristy of Bath's Department of Computer Science are working with Malcolm Johnson and Tony Walter to investigate the extent to which social and collaborative media technologies can be used to reduce the isolation experienced by non-resident patients in the Hospice.

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The Future of Funeral Directing

Lucy Easthope, Christine Valentine and Kate Woodthorpe are conducting research that will explore the experiences and views of students currently undertaking the Foundation Degree in Funeral Services at the University of Bath on the future of the industry.

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Baby gardens: A privilege or predicament?

Kate Woodthorpe is currently undertaking a project into the provision and use of baby gardens within cemeteries and churchyards around the country. The research has stemmed from the increased scrutiny and regulation of memorialisation in recent years (Woodthorpe, 2010), and how memorialising activity in baby sections often appears to be an exempted from these rules.

Read more about this research project

Research collaboration launches this month
Death of technology users

Experts at the Centre for Death and Society (CDAS) at the University of Bath will be collaborating with Wendy Moncur (School of Computing, University of Dundee) who has been awarded a prestigious 3-year EPSRC Postdoctoral Cross-Disciplinary Research Fellowship, involving £380,000 of funding.

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The role of the Anatomical Pathology Technologist

Dr. Kate Woodthorpe's current research with Dr Carol Komaromy from the Open University is examining the work of the Anatomical Pathology Technologist (more commonly referred to as mortuary technicians) in hospital settings.

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How people who are dying or mourning use the Arts

There are two main ways in which death and the arts are usually discussed:

• Art and music therapy, typically aiming to enable the client to express themselves through one or more art forms in order to address fears and anxieties.
• Death as a theme in art history (including music, literature, etc), along with work by contemporary professional artists encountering their own mortality.

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Harnessing Death's Fire: A case study on Heat Capture Technology at the Haycombe Cemetery and Crematorium

This project will analyse how heat-capture technology can be used in crematoria to both eliminate mercury emissions and produce a useable energy resource. A further aim will be to examine how any energy produced via heat capture can then be used within the local facility as well as transferred to the National Grid when in surplus.

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A Labor of Death and a Labor Against Death: Memorial Tattoos in Late Modernity

Memorial tattooing is, as Marita Sturken discusses the memorialization of the dead, a technology of memory. Yet the tattoo is more than just a representation of the dead. It is a historiographical practice in which the living person seeks to make death intelligible by permanently altering his or her body. In this way, memorial tattooing not only establishes a new language of intelligibility between the living and the dead, it produces a historical text carried on the historian’s body. A memorial tattoo is an image but it is also (and most importantly) a narrative.

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Exploring the transition to survivorship in breast and bowel cancer patients and their partners

Dr. Paula Smith, Dr Julie Turner-Cobb and Dr. Mike Osborn

This study is a pilot exploratory study that seeks to investigate the patient and partner experience of ending adjuvant chemotherapy and radiotherapy for primary breast of colorectal cancer.

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The presence of the dead in society

Tony Walter is working on a paper developing his 2008 Romania conference paper, exploring the factors that influence the presence of the dead in society, which suggest that (contrary to conventional wisdom in death studies) the dead are more present in late modern than in traditional societies.

Link to conference paper (opens in new window)