For Black History Month 2025 we're highlighting research from across the University that impacts identity, belonging, and cultural continuity for Black people.

Death and culture

Traditional African attitudes to death stem from cultural belief systems that view the human life course as cyclical, not linear. Rituals and ceremonial practices maintain connection between the living and the dead, as well as the soil and landscape. But talking about or planning for your death is taboo. However, as Africa and the rest of the world change, attitudes to death and dying will inevitably change too.

“We've seen how people are moving from natural burials to cremation. Statistics state that 79% of recent deaths have been cremated in the UK” says George.

When it comes to repatriation of a body, this is where disparities between UK and African cultures begin to show. George notes that “In many African communities people will insist on taking complete bodies back home, rather than ashes after cremation. You can imagine large caskets are expensive and take up much more space during transport. Transporting them is also more expensive, as well as increasing the carbon footprint.”

George hopes that his research will help by opening up conversations that will lead the way in changing attitudes: “Being a death researcher, I talk freely about it. Most people are not so comfortable.”

Violent deaths and death by suicide are still often taboo in African culture. These types of deaths can often by surrounded by stigma, which can compound the grief of families, who also may be blacklisted from business dealings or labelled as ‘unmarriable’: “I look at my research as a positive force towards changing that attitude, and then also highlighting the need for further research into key areas of death and body repatriation, such as financial preparation.”

As part of his research George is looking at the practice of crowdfunding for funerals and repatriation, which has been going on for many years, from before ‘crowdfunding’ was even a word: “I don't have life insurance. But if I died today people would knock at your door, because they know you know me. They would say ‘George is dead and we'd like to take his body back to Uganda’ and you will give £5 to help. This is how people take back bodies.”

George hopes that with a shift in attitudes people will think more practically about their own death, removing the stress of financing the funeral from the community who are also struggling with grief.

In the margins of academia

George grew up in Fort Portal, Uganda, a city situated at the foot of Mount Rwenzori, named the ‘Mountains of the Moon’ by early European explorers. He completed his Bachelor of Education in Uganda at Makerere University, Kampala. In 2011 George came to the UK and later went on to study a Master of Science in Social and Cultural Theory at the University of Bristol (2020). Following his graduation he enrolled here at Bath to complete a Master of Research in International Development (2021). This then led to beginning his PhD at the University of Bath in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences.

Studying African attitudes and death processes has been a struggle at times, due to the lack of existing research in this area. George remembers: “You find a great book and it's a key resource, but Africa is missing. I've spoken to some academic authors who have put up their hands and admitted that they wrote everything about it except repatriation and Africa.”

Decolonising research is an important part of the current academic landscape in the UK, which starts by admitting that much of the research across many fields is based on Euro-American-centric knowledge. George sees this as key: “My African heritage, family and cultural roots are very important to me. I am committed to popularising African death ways in diaspora, drawing discussions from the margins to the centre of academia. I leverage my position as a Ugandan born British individual to build bridges of understanding through comparing similarities and differences.”

Excluding Africa and experiences of Black people from academic research has created a knowledge inequity throughout history. If a change is not made existing disparities and disadvantages could be exacerbated.

Life, death, and community

Although George’s motivation to pursue this area of research was not purely academic: “I lived with my cousin in London, he had been in the UK for over 20 years. He was HIV positive, and developed AIDS, so he decided to return to Uganda to die. He bid me farewell, and left me a pair of socks to hold on to, upon which to hang my grief.”

These socks, a token representing a strong bond and a great loss, remain important to George: "After seven years, a hole appeared in my socks. My fellow PhD researcher Katie Taylor of Oxford Brookes University understood the role that the pair of socks played regarding my grief, and she darned the pair for me!"

Less than six months after returning to Africa, George’s cousin died at the age of only 47. A few years later, in 2018, George was to receive another blow: “Around Christmas time I kept sending texts to my friend because we used to communicate almost every day, but I had no reply in over six weeks. I eventually contacted a mutual friend who told me she had died, and her body had been returned to Africa. The grief was overwhelming, and grief of both my cousin and my close friend.”

It was these two instances that led to George questioning the processes around death and repatriation – one person returning alive and the other dead. After proposing this as the topic of his first MSc and being knocked back, he persevered and secured a dual funded PhD on the subject.

George notes the support of his supervisors Dr John Troyer and Dr Naomi Pendle has been vital, alongside the rest of the University of Bath community. From the Social and Policy Sciences subject librarian to the Security team on campus, and his fellow PhD students in the faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences: “I was born everyone's child in the village, it took a community to bring up a child. It feels the same here at Bath.”

Despite studying a topic that some may call macabre, George’s outlook is positive: "Looking far into the future is not very easy. But in my multiple identity as Ugandan born British cultural geographer or Sociologist academic, I think I look forward whichever direction I face. And I believe that my work has just begun."