Susan R Hemer
Biographic Data
| ID | 82781 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Susan R Hemer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Susan R |
| FAMILY NAME | Hemer |
| SIGNATURE | HEMER S R |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Adelaide |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3056-8428 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 63 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
‘The last thing we want is somebody who liked a soft pink lipstick to have a bright red’: Dead body aesthetics in South Australian funeral homes
This paper addresses the aesthetics of bodily preparation of the deceased, pre‐funeral, in Australia. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Adelaide in 2020–2023, we reflect on participants' accounts and behaviours, noting that dead bodies, particularly those under the care of, and prepared by, members of the funeral industry, were conceptually grouped into three distinct categories: the ‘good’, the ‘ too good’, and the ‘bad’. ‘Good’ dead …
Women and Children Last’: Establishing Maternal and Child Health Services in Papua New Guinea
This article examines the establishment of maternal and child health services in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea in the post-Second World War period. It has been argued that women’s and children’s health had a low priority with the administrations of the respective territories pre-war. In the early post-war period, the need for services specifically for women and children was recognized by the Administration. A maternal and child health ser…
What’s said and done in the mortuary stays in the mortuary: Secrecy and (in)visibility of the dead and data collection in South Australia
This paper draws on original ethnographic research in Australia focussing on the handling, management, and conceptualisation of death and the dead human body in 2020–2021. Analysis produced themes of secrecy and (in)visibility regarding both death and the collection of data. Key findings discussed are the withdrawal of information and off-the-record comments from participants, controlling of public access to information, and the (in)visibility of…
Blogging at the end-of-life: Anticipatory grief, losses, and positive experiences in facing terminal illness
This paper explores the experiences of people who blog about their own terminal illness and dying through the lens of anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief is a concept which is frequently applied to those people who will be bereaved by death, rather than those who are themselves dying. Ethnographic content analysis of terminal illness blogs of two Australian women clearly narrate experiences of loss and grief which can be understood through the…
Cochlear Implants: Young Adults' Embodied Experiences of Deafness and Hearing through Implanted Technology
This article ethnographically considers the experiences of Australian young people who were born deaf and who hear and listen through cochlear implants to explore the intersection between the sensory body, lived experience and technology. The article draws on phenomenology to examine how experiences of deafness are productive in analysing articulations of embodiment and the meanings embedded in a body that is valued as both deaf and hearing. Leav…
The ethics and obligations of long-term ethnographic relationships: Revelatory Moments and the Concept of Solidarity
This article reflects on an ethical and revelatory moment in the development of my long-term fieldwork relationships with people of the Lihir Islands in Papua New Guinea. Ethnographic research globally is now shaped through formal processes of ethical review, with the requirements for informed consent, privacy, and consideration of harm and beneficence. Researchers then have to put these procedures into practice, often encountering the need to we…
Peeking Behind the Curtains: Exploring Death and the Body through Patchwork Ethnography
Patchwork ethnography is a viable methodological and theoretical approach. Fieldwork can be accessible, achievable and accommodating of both personal and professional circumstances and responsibilities of the researcher, and external factors such as living within a COVID-19 world. In this article, we explain patchwork ethnography and showcase how the methodology was implemented during the first author's PhD fieldwork conducted in 2020–2021 relati…
Informed choice and unbiased support: Parents’ experiences of decision-making in paediatric deafness
A body of research highlights parents' decision-making and the contested nature of deafness as an issue in clinical practices. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork from 2017 to 2018 in an Australian city a ‘follow the baby’ approach was undertaken in a multi-sited setting. Forty-one parents and twenty-seven health and education professionals were interviewed. Informed choice, framed in this context as ‘unbiased’, aims to empower pa…
Emotion as Motivator: Parents, Professionals and Diagnosing Childhood Deafness
Diagnosing deafness is a culturally situated practice generating considerable research in health sciences but limited work in anthropology. Diagnosis fast-tracks parents into a medical and education pathway but can also create tension for parents and professionals. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, we argue that in this biomedical context, emotions are often understood by professionals as impairing for parents, and hence problematic for the trea…
Broadcasting Your Death Through Livestreaming: Understanding Cybersuicide Through Concepts of Performance
Shock, anger and bad deaths in Lihir: A reanalysis of grieving in Papua New Guinea
This paper explores a revelatory moment in fieldwork-the death of a close friend and research participant who died suddenly in suspicious circumstances. Her mourning period challenged my understandings of grief in Lihir. In a previous article I argued that grief in Lihir is resilient and focused on remembering and forgetting, rather than emotions. However this particular mourning period was an emotionally charged space and time. I explore what ma…
Culture and grief: Ethnographic perspectives on ritual, relationships and remembering
This introduction to the special issue on Anthropology and grief explores the contributions of an ethnographic approach to the interdisciplinary study of grief. After a brief overview of previous anthropological research, we identify key themes emerging from this global collection of case studies: the benefits of long-term fieldwork in nuancing the complexity of grief and complicating cultural narratives that surround it; the ways in which emotio…
Sexuality, Family Planning and Religion in Papua New Guinea: Reproductive Governance and Catholicism in the Lihir Islands
This paper explores the complex and dynamic relationship between religion, sexuality and health in the particular context of the Lihir Islands in Papua New Guinea. Through the teachings of Catholicism in Lihir, a version of human sexuality and relationships is promoted that assumes lifelong monogamy, heterosexuality and restraint of sexual desire to ensure safe reproduction and sexuality. Techniques of governance shape reproductive practices in a…
Preparing for death: Care, anticipatory grief and social death in Lihir, Papua New Guinea
This paper explores concepts of good and bad deaths, social death and anticipatory grief through an ethnographic exploration of the processes of preparing for death in Lihir, Papua New Guinea. Lihirians shape their dying process through the preparation and care of the aged and dying person, ritually, practically and emotionally. Without this process of preparation, grief and the mourning period has a different character to it, and can be much mor…
Debating Appropriate Approaches to Violence in Lihir: The Challenges of Addressing Gender Violence in Papua New Guinea
Recent years have seen a proliferation of initiatives aimed at addressing gender violence both at the national and local levels in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Numerous studies in PNG have noted high levels of violence. This paper takes a range of initiatives in the Lihir Islands, New Ireland Province (NIP), as a case study to discuss the challenges of speaking about, creating policy and attempting to manage gender violence. In Lihir there have been m…
Attachment, Mothering and Mental Illness: Mother–Infant Therapy in an Institutional Context
Ethnographic intersections: Emotions, senses and spaces
Emplacement and resistance: Social and political complexities in development‐induced displacement in Papua New Guinea
This paper argues that attending to social and political factors in development‐induced displacement is critical even for projects that involve resettlement of small populations. Taking the resettlement of two villages by the Lihir Gold Mine in Papua New Guinea as a unique case study, I analyse why one village was relatively successfully resettled, while the other has been very complicated, leading to hostility and conflict. In these cases the in…
Emotions, Senses, Spaces: Ethnographic Engagements and Intersections
Lanka, where she has led, inter alia, a project mapping gender data and statistics related to water and agriculture with research teams in the Volta, Nile, Ganges and Mekong river
Breaking Silences and Upholding Confidences: Responding to HIV in the Lihir Islands, Papua New Guinea
Various forms of silence are understood to characterize the response to HIV/AIDS in the Lihir Islands in Papua New Guinea. While some efforts have been made to prevent HIV and educate residents, these seem not to have been in proportion to its classification as a high-risk setting for transmission, given social factors associated with the Lihir gold mine. Confidentiality is both practiced yet critiqued in Lihir as another form of silencing that d…
Islands of Love, Islands of Risk: Culture and HIV in the Trobriands
This book is a welcome contribution both to the anthropological literature on Papua New Guinea, and to the anthropological and broader literature on HIV and its prevention. The author, Katherine Le
Tracing the Melanesian Person: Emotions and Relationships in Lihir
Dedicated to the memory of Emma Zanahien, who taught me to approach the world with good humour and love despite hardship, and of Mesulam Aisoli MBE for his wit and enthusiasm for learning
Goddard, Michael: Out of Place. Madness in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea
Anthropos , Seite 615 - 616
Local, Regional and Worldly Interconnections: The Catholic and United Churches in Lihir, Papua New Guinea
At the local level, globalisation has often been interpreted as being passively accepted or heroically resisted. In the specific context of Christianity in the Lihir Islands, Papua New Guinea, this paper challenges both conceptualisations. The trajectories of the Catholic and United churches in Lihir began similarly but have diverged: neither can be cast simply as localised or globalised. To understand the complex historical, local, regional and …
Grief as social experience: Death and bereavement in Lihir, Papua New Guinea 1
This paper explores the nature of grief in Lihir, Papua New Guinea, in light of psychological theories of bereavement and grief. Anthropologists have demonstrated that culture has an impact on both the expression and experience of grief and can offer both a challenge to established theories and new perspectives on the conceptualisations and experiences of the bereaved. Until recently, ‘grief work’ was the foremost model for understanding bereavem…
Culture and grief: Ethnographic perspectives on ritual, relationships and remembering
This introduction to the special issue on Anthropology and grief explores the contributions of an ethnographic approach to the interdisciplinary study of grief. After a brief overview of previous anthropological research, we identify key themes emerging from this global collection of case studies: the benefits of long-term fieldwork in nuancing the complexity of grief and complicating cultural narratives that surround it; the ways in which emotio…
Local, Regional and Worldly Interconnections: The Catholic and United Churches in Lihir, Papua New Guinea
At the local level, globalisation has often been interpreted as being passively accepted or heroically resisted. In the specific context of Christianity in the Lihir Islands, Papua New Guinea, this paper challenges both conceptualisations. The trajectories of the Catholic and United churches in Lihir began similarly but have diverged: neither can be cast simply as localised or globalised. To understand the complex historical, local, regional and …
Tracing the Melanesian Person: Emotions and Relationships in Lihir
Dedicated to the memory of Emma Zanahien, who taught me to approach the world with good humour and love despite hardship, and of Mesulam Aisoli MBE for his wit and enthusiasm for learning
Debating Appropriate Approaches to Violence in Lihir: The Challenges of Addressing Gender Violence in Papua New Guinea
Recent years have seen a proliferation of initiatives aimed at addressing gender violence both at the national and local levels in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Numerous studies in PNG have noted high levels of violence. This paper takes a range of initiatives in the Lihir Islands, New Ireland Province (NIP), as a case study to discuss the challenges of speaking about, creating policy and attempting to manage gender violence. In Lihir there have been m…
Emotions, Senses, Spaces: Ethnographic Engagements and Intersections
Lanka, where she has led, inter alia, a project mapping gender data and statistics related to water and agriculture with research teams in the Volta, Nile, Ganges and Mekong river
What’s said and done in the mortuary stays in the mortuary: Secrecy and (in)visibility of the dead and data collection in South Australia
This paper draws on original ethnographic research in Australia focussing on the handling, management, and conceptualisation of death and the dead human body in 2020–2021. Analysis produced themes of secrecy and (in)visibility regarding both death and the collection of data. Key findings discussed are the withdrawal of information and off-the-record comments from participants, controlling of public access to information, and the (in)visibility of…
Sexuality, Family Planning and Religion in Papua New Guinea: Reproductive Governance and Catholicism in the Lihir Islands
This paper explores the complex and dynamic relationship between religion, sexuality and health in the particular context of the Lihir Islands in Papua New Guinea. Through the teachings of Catholicism in Lihir, a version of human sexuality and relationships is promoted that assumes lifelong monogamy, heterosexuality and restraint of sexual desire to ensure safe reproduction and sexuality. Techniques of governance shape reproductive practices in a…
The ethics and obligations of long-term ethnographic relationships: Revelatory Moments and the Concept of Solidarity
This article reflects on an ethical and revelatory moment in the development of my long-term fieldwork relationships with people of the Lihir Islands in Papua New Guinea. Ethnographic research globally is now shaped through formal processes of ethical review, with the requirements for informed consent, privacy, and consideration of harm and beneficence. Researchers then have to put these procedures into practice, often encountering the need to we…
Shock, anger and bad deaths in Lihir: A reanalysis of grieving in Papua New Guinea
This paper explores a revelatory moment in fieldwork-the death of a close friend and research participant who died suddenly in suspicious circumstances. Her mourning period challenged my understandings of grief in Lihir. In a previous article I argued that grief in Lihir is resilient and focused on remembering and forgetting, rather than emotions. However this particular mourning period was an emotionally charged space and time. I explore what ma…
Breaking Silences and Upholding Confidences: Responding to HIV in the Lihir Islands, Papua New Guinea
Various forms of silence are understood to characterize the response to HIV/AIDS in the Lihir Islands in Papua New Guinea. While some efforts have been made to prevent HIV and educate residents, these seem not to have been in proportion to its classification as a high-risk setting for transmission, given social factors associated with the Lihir gold mine. Confidentiality is both practiced yet critiqued in Lihir as another form of silencing that d…
Piot , Personhood, Place and Mobility in Lihir, Papua New Guinea
This paper is an exploration of the nature of personhood through the medium of the concept of piot in the Lihir islands, Papua New Guinea. Piot is an embodied experience in response to the movement of others in space. When people leave or arrive at a place and spend the night, others in the area feel unwell. Piot is thus one aspect of the relations between persons. I suggest that ideas of relational personhood are inadequate to fully comprehend p…
Grief as social experience: Death and bereavement in Lihir, Papua New Guinea 1
This paper explores the nature of grief in Lihir, Papua New Guinea, in light of psychological theories of bereavement and grief. Anthropologists have demonstrated that culture has an impact on both the expression and experience of grief and can offer both a challenge to established theories and new perspectives on the conceptualisations and experiences of the bereaved. Until recently, ‘grief work’ was the foremost model for understanding bereavem…
Local, Regional and Worldly Interconnections: The Catholic and United Churches in Lihir, Papua New Guinea
At the local level, globalisation has often been interpreted as being passively accepted or heroically resisted. In the specific context of Christianity in the Lihir Islands, Papua New Guinea, this paper challenges both conceptualisations. The trajectories of the Catholic and United churches in Lihir began similarly but have diverged: neither can be cast simply as localised or globalised. To understand the complex historical, local, regional and …
Goddard, Michael: Out of Place. Madness in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea
Anthropos , Seite 615 - 616
Tracing the Melanesian Person: Emotions and Relationships in Lihir
Dedicated to the memory of Emma Zanahien, who taught me to approach the world with good humour and love despite hardship, and of Mesulam Aisoli MBE for his wit and enthusiasm for learning
Islands of Love, Islands of Risk: Culture and HIV in the Trobriands
This book is a welcome contribution both to the anthropological literature on Papua New Guinea, and to the anthropological and broader literature on HIV and its prevention. The author, Katherine Le
Breaking Silences and Upholding Confidences: Responding to HIV in the Lihir Islands, Papua New Guinea
Various forms of silence are understood to characterize the response to HIV/AIDS in the Lihir Islands in Papua New Guinea. While some efforts have been made to prevent HIV and educate residents, these seem not to have been in proportion to its classification as a high-risk setting for transmission, given social factors associated with the Lihir gold mine. Confidentiality is both practiced yet critiqued in Lihir as another form of silencing that d…
Ethnographic intersections: Emotions, senses and spaces
Emplacement and resistance: Social and political complexities in development‐induced displacement in Papua New Guinea
This paper argues that attending to social and political factors in development‐induced displacement is critical even for projects that involve resettlement of small populations. Taking the resettlement of two villages by the Lihir Gold Mine in Papua New Guinea as a unique case study, I analyse why one village was relatively successfully resettled, while the other has been very complicated, leading to hostility and conflict. In these cases the in…
Emotions, Senses, Spaces: Ethnographic Engagements and Intersections
Lanka, where she has led, inter alia, a project mapping gender data and statistics related to water and agriculture with research teams in the Volta, Nile, Ganges and Mekong river
Attachment, Mothering and Mental Illness: Mother–Infant Therapy in an Institutional Context
Preparing for death: Care, anticipatory grief and social death in Lihir, Papua New Guinea
This paper explores concepts of good and bad deaths, social death and anticipatory grief through an ethnographic exploration of the processes of preparing for death in Lihir, Papua New Guinea. Lihirians shape their dying process through the preparation and care of the aged and dying person, ritually, practically and emotionally. Without this process of preparation, grief and the mourning period has a different character to it, and can be much mor…
Debating Appropriate Approaches to Violence in Lihir: The Challenges of Addressing Gender Violence in Papua New Guinea
Recent years have seen a proliferation of initiatives aimed at addressing gender violence both at the national and local levels in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Numerous studies in PNG have noted high levels of violence. This paper takes a range of initiatives in the Lihir Islands, New Ireland Province (NIP), as a case study to discuss the challenges of speaking about, creating policy and attempting to manage gender violence. In Lihir there have been m…
Sexuality, Family Planning and Religion in Papua New Guinea: Reproductive Governance and Catholicism in the Lihir Islands
This paper explores the complex and dynamic relationship between religion, sexuality and health in the particular context of the Lihir Islands in Papua New Guinea. Through the teachings of Catholicism in Lihir, a version of human sexuality and relationships is promoted that assumes lifelong monogamy, heterosexuality and restraint of sexual desire to ensure safe reproduction and sexuality. Techniques of governance shape reproductive practices in a…
Broadcasting Your Death Through Livestreaming: Understanding Cybersuicide Through Concepts of Performance
Shock, anger and bad deaths in Lihir: A reanalysis of grieving in Papua New Guinea
This paper explores a revelatory moment in fieldwork-the death of a close friend and research participant who died suddenly in suspicious circumstances. Her mourning period challenged my understandings of grief in Lihir. In a previous article I argued that grief in Lihir is resilient and focused on remembering and forgetting, rather than emotions. However this particular mourning period was an emotionally charged space and time. I explore what ma…
Culture and grief: Ethnographic perspectives on ritual, relationships and remembering
This introduction to the special issue on Anthropology and grief explores the contributions of an ethnographic approach to the interdisciplinary study of grief. After a brief overview of previous anthropological research, we identify key themes emerging from this global collection of case studies: the benefits of long-term fieldwork in nuancing the complexity of grief and complicating cultural narratives that surround it; the ways in which emotio…
Informed choice and unbiased support: Parents’ experiences of decision-making in paediatric deafness
A body of research highlights parents' decision-making and the contested nature of deafness as an issue in clinical practices. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork from 2017 to 2018 in an Australian city a ‘follow the baby’ approach was undertaken in a multi-sited setting. Forty-one parents and twenty-seven health and education professionals were interviewed. Informed choice, framed in this context as ‘unbiased’, aims to empower pa…
Emotion as Motivator: Parents, Professionals and Diagnosing Childhood Deafness
Diagnosing deafness is a culturally situated practice generating considerable research in health sciences but limited work in anthropology. Diagnosis fast-tracks parents into a medical and education pathway but can also create tension for parents and professionals. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, we argue that in this biomedical context, emotions are often understood by professionals as impairing for parents, and hence problematic for the trea…
Peeking Behind the Curtains: Exploring Death and the Body through Patchwork Ethnography
Patchwork ethnography is a viable methodological and theoretical approach. Fieldwork can be accessible, achievable and accommodating of both personal and professional circumstances and responsibilities of the researcher, and external factors such as living within a COVID-19 world. In this article, we explain patchwork ethnography and showcase how the methodology was implemented during the first author's PhD fieldwork conducted in 2020–2021 relati…
Cochlear Implants: Young Adults' Embodied Experiences of Deafness and Hearing through Implanted Technology
This article ethnographically considers the experiences of Australian young people who were born deaf and who hear and listen through cochlear implants to explore the intersection between the sensory body, lived experience and technology. The article draws on phenomenology to examine how experiences of deafness are productive in analysing articulations of embodiment and the meanings embedded in a body that is valued as both deaf and hearing. Leav…
The ethics and obligations of long-term ethnographic relationships: Revelatory Moments and the Concept of Solidarity
This article reflects on an ethical and revelatory moment in the development of my long-term fieldwork relationships with people of the Lihir Islands in Papua New Guinea. Ethnographic research globally is now shaped through formal processes of ethical review, with the requirements for informed consent, privacy, and consideration of harm and beneficence. Researchers then have to put these procedures into practice, often encountering the need to we…
Blogging at the end-of-life: Anticipatory grief, losses, and positive experiences in facing terminal illness
This paper explores the experiences of people who blog about their own terminal illness and dying through the lens of anticipatory grief. Anticipatory grief is a concept which is frequently applied to those people who will be bereaved by death, rather than those who are themselves dying. Ethnographic content analysis of terminal illness blogs of two Australian women clearly narrate experiences of loss and grief which can be understood through the…
‘The last thing we want is somebody who liked a soft pink lipstick to have a bright red’: Dead body aesthetics in South Australian funeral homes
This paper addresses the aesthetics of bodily preparation of the deceased, pre‐funeral, in Australia. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Adelaide in 2020–2023, we reflect on participants' accounts and behaviours, noting that dead bodies, particularly those under the care of, and prepared by, members of the funeral industry, were conceptually grouped into three distinct categories: the ‘good’, the ‘ too good’, and the ‘bad’. ‘Good’ dead …
Women and Children Last’: Establishing Maternal and Child Health Services in Papua New Guinea
This article examines the establishment of maternal and child health services in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea in the post-Second World War period. It has been argued that women’s and children’s health had a low priority with the administrations of the respective territories pre-war. In the early post-war period, the need for services specifically for women and children was recognized by the Administration. A maternal and child health ser…
Sociology (15 works) · Psychology (13 works) · New guinea (12 works) · Ethnology (11 works) · History (10 works) · Medicine (9 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (8 works) · Anthropology (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Ethnography (7 works)