Researching Death, Dying and Bereavement

Erica Borgstrom is a medical anthropologist currently based at the Open University, UK. Her teaching and research focuses on death and dying, with a particular emphasis on end-of-life care. For the past six years she has researched how end-of-life care policy in England is shaping healthcare practice and how this relates (or not) to people's experiences of care and everyday life. Julie Ellis is a Research Associate in the Department of Sociological Studies at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her primary research interests are in the areas of identity, material culture and personal relationships at the end of life. She is currently working on a research project which explores the impact of visual technology on traditional foetal and neonatal autopsy practices. Kate Woodthorpe is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Bath, UK. She is the editor of Death and Social Policy in Challenging Times (with Foster, 2016), and The Matter of Death: Space, place and materiality (with Hockey and Komaromy, 2010). Her research interests include funeral practices and the question of familial obligation. She is the editor of the Mortality journal.

• Preface Introduction: researching death, dying and bereavement 1. Reflecting on death: The emotionality of the research encounter 2. "Doing death": Reflecting on the researcher’s subjectivity and emotions 3. Trans-Atlantic death methods: disciplinarity shared and challenged by a common language 4. Interpreting ‘grief ’ in Senegal: language, emotions and cross-cultural translation in a francophone African context 5. Images of fatal violence: negotiating the dark heart of death research 6. Auto/biographical approaches to researching death and bereavement: connections, continuums, contrasts 7. Negotiating post-research encounters: reflections on learning of participant deaths following a qualitative study