The Death Studies Podcast

What's the episode about? 
In this episode, hear about an event on Love and Loss: A DayAt Arnos Vale Historic Garden Cemetery, Bristol discussing love, romance, sex, death, culture, prison writing, slow suicide, creative writing, obituaries, epitaphs and more.

You will listen to a range of academic research love, romance, death, grief and loss, all based or connected to the South West of England, and many of whom were recorded whilst walking around the rather hilly Arnos Vale Historic Garden Cemetery in Bristol, so do forgive any out of breath-ness!
 
The day in April 2026 at Arnos Vale began with a networking and idea generation event for researchers, followed by a guided tour open to the public with the theme of love and loss.

This was filled with a rich mix of real-life tales — from couples united in life but separated in death, to daring elopements, parental love, and forbidden love. Some stories are touching, some tragic, and some wonderfully surprising.  This was followed by a creative writing workshop on the theme of love and loss, including practical activities and stimulus prompts drawn from the cemetery and the lives of its occupants.
 
The aims of the day were:
 
●      To provide a forum for constructive discussion & preliminary dissemination of research works in progress.
●      To identify potential future collaboration.
●      To share research of high public interest with an openaudience in an established heritage setting.
 
Links below for more information on the place and people inthis episode!

Find out more about Arnos Vale.
 
Find out more about newly appointed Associate Professor Dr JoParsons.
 
Find out more about Janine Marriott.
 
Find out more about Dr Andrew Griffiths.
 
A huge thank you to the Open University for their supportfor this event via the Academic Communities Fund!
 How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?
To cite this episode, you can use thefollowing citation:
Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. (2026) The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 26 July 2026. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.33089351
 What next?
Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts! Gota question? Get in touch.

Dead Women and Gendered Death in Visual Culture for MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture
 
Co-edited by Devaleena Kundu, Bethan-Michael-Fox, and Khyati Tripathi, Dead Women and Gendered Death in Visual Culture dives into the factors behind the deeply genderedrepresentations of death and dead bodies in visual culture.
 
In a world dominated by the visual, the female dead body is glamorised and eroticised for consumption.This focus issueexamines the various ways one negotiates with visual representations of femininity in death and the intersectional politics at work behind representations frequently divesting the female body of its agency even in death.
 
The issue features scholars from across the globe with contributions exploring subjects such as fetishisation of femalecorpses, necrophiliac fantasies, spectrality and haunted bodies, feminist necropoetics, gendered deaths and wartime propaganda, and female suicides. The issue invites readers to critically engage with the question of looking and consuming gendered representations of death and dying in visual culture.
 
There is a foreword my Michele Aaron, as her work has informed many of the articles, and you can also hear her on the podcast .
 
There were 25 submissions overall, and in this episode you can hear from the editors and from 12 of the contributors.

You can find the issue here: https://www.maifeminism.com/dead-women-and-gendered-death-in-visual-culture/

What's the episode about?
 
In this episode, hear Dr Molly Conisbee on social histories of death and mourning, liberation thanatology, lessons fromthe history of death, walking tours and being a bereavement councillor

Who is Molly?
 
Molly Conisbee is a social historian and visiting research fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath.
 
She has a PhD from the University of Bristol and has spent the last ten years researching the social history of death and mourning.
 
Conisbee is also a bereavement counsellor, has curated walks on the history of death around the country and has written for the Guardian and Ecologist.

To cite this episode, you can use the following citation:
Conisbee, M. (2026) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R.Published 1 July 2026. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.32866145

What's the episode about?
In this episode, hear Professor Sandra Ruiz on poetry, writing, form, Brown Study, Ricanness, anticoloniality, grief-work, walking and being with the dead, and minoritarian aesthetics
Who is Sandra?
Sandra Ruiz is the author of Ricanness: Enduring Time in Anticolonial Performance; Left Turns in Brown Study; and Tears for Tears: Aesthetics in Grief Minor. Ruizis the co-author with Hypatia Vourloumis of Formless Formation: Vignettes for the End of this World and The Alleys: Just Dropped in to See What Condition My Condition Was In andco-editor with Shane Vogel & Uri McMillan of the NYU Press book series Minoritarian Aesthetics. When not writing and editing, Ruiz curates and produces through the Minor Aesthetics Lab. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Sandra Ruiz is the Sue Divan Professor of Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre.
The special issue on gendered death in visual culture mentioned in the introduction is here.

How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?
To cite this episode, you can use the following citation:
Ruiz, S. (2026) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 June 2026. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.32529204
What next?
Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts! Got a question? Get in touch.

What's the episode about? 
In this episode, hear Ruth E. Toulson on the necropolitics of the ordinary, dying and death in Singapore, anthropology, burials, funeral directors and morticians
Who is Ruth?
At Johns Hopkins, Ruth E. Toulson is a lecturer for the Master of Arts in Museum Studies program. Toulson is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on the dead body, and death’s material culture in Southeast and East Asia. Trained at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Toulson brings to Johns Hopkins a multi-sited collaborative international research agenda that combines long-term ethnographic fieldwork and in-depthwork in museum collections. Toulson brings significant teaching and advising experience at the graduate level in anthropology, material culture studies, and critical museum studies.
As a whole, Toulson’s scholarship explores the intersection ofdeath and the state, particularly in moments of sociopolitical transition.
Toulson probes this intersection by focusing particularly on the dead body as a form of highly politicized material culture. Supported through numerous external grants, including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, and the Hong Kong Research Council, thisresearch program has resulted in published work, including a book and numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed articles, including in Journal of Material Culture.
Toulson recently delivered the keynote address at University ofMelbourne, Redesigning Deathcare Conference, and has given invited lectures at the Gatty Lecture Series (Cornell), The Centre for the Study of Death and Society (University of Bath), The Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies (Harvard), and at the Council for Southeast Asia (Yale), among otherinvitations. Toulson is associate editor of the journal Anthropology and Humanism.
How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?
To cite this episode, you can use the following citation:
Toulson, R. (2026) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 May 2026. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.32143756
 
Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts! Gota question? Get in touch.