Kate Woodthorpe
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 260396 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Kate Woodthorpe |
| PRENOMES | Kate |
| SOBRENOME | Woodthorpe |
| ASSINATURA | WOODTHORPE K |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Bath |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0642-2832 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 37 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 127 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 36 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1970 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Is human body disposal an environmental issue
Despite growing global commitments to addressing climate change, the environmental impacts of human body disposal (HBD) remain poorly understood. In both0 the UK and the US, the contexts from which this paper is written, HBD is typically framed as a matter of personal choice shaped by preference, tradition, or belief rather than as a cumulative social or environmental concern. Given the relatively small emissions generated by an individual’s disp…
Between Silence and Service
This study explores how Italian funeral home and cemetery workers construct vocational meaning and navigate identity amid constant exposure to death. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 participants (12 funeral directors, 7 cemetery workers), exploring emotional labor, motivation, coping, stigma, and ethics. Six themes emerged: (1) emotional labor and detachment, (2) mortality and transf…
Caring for the dead at home
At a time when the natural death and home deathcare movements are gaining traction both in the UK and elsewhere, this article details an exploratory project on the barriers to and potential for caring for deceased people at home in England. A two-phase study, the paper uses data from a discourse analysis and interviews with deathcare professionals to show that there is limited information online on keeping the deceased person at home, and that pa…
From Writing to Doing
Drawing on the auto/biographical experiences of four women working in the field of death studies as well as on a range of creative, professional, and academic sources about loss and the process of writing, in this article, we explore creativity, innovation and impact, and the strategies on offer in auto/biographical writing about dying, death, and grief. We ask and explore the questions: What is writing doing? When is writing doing? and provide i…
The unclaimed
Transparency in action or political fiction? The pre-inquiry phase of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry
This article examines how public inquiries come into being through a detailed analysis of the pre-inquiry phase of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry. We focus on two key points of contestation—around the timing of the inquiry and its terms of reference—and suggest that what is at stake during the pre-stage of an inquiry is its ontological and epistemological orientation. Our analysis traces the emergence of two distinct positions during this phase: a grass…
Remembering and Narrativising Covid-19
How the COVID-19 pandemic, and the deaths that occurred during the acute phase of the pandemic (2020-2021), will be remembered is yet to be determined. Writing from a UK perspective, this short article reflects on the way in which memory, narratives and death are constructed, contested and (re)produced. Drawing on the authors' respective sociological sub-fields, it makes a case for an ongoing sociological appraisal of emergent COVID-19 narratives…
The Aftermath of Death in the Continuing Lives of the Living
While there is a significant interdisciplinary and international literature available on death, dying and bereavement, literature addressing responses to death is dominated by assumptions about individuality, framing 'bereavement' and 'grief' in terms of the inner psychic life of the individual. Scholarly literature tells us little about how the continuing aftermath of death is experienced in the everyday, relational lives of the living. Inspired…
My Memories of the Time We Had Together Are More Important
Funerals have long been of interest to social scientists. Previous sociological work has examined the relationship between individuality, belief and tradition within funeral services, founded on the assumption that public rituals have psycho-social benefit for organisers and attendees. With the introduction of direct cremation to the UK, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on funeral service attendance in 2020 and 2021, critique of this assum…
Funeral practices and grief
Does restricting the ceremonial/ritual arrangements around a cremation to a minimum have a negative association with grief over time? This question has increasingly concerned professionals in the funeral industry as well as those in healthcare capacities working with bereaved persons. We examined the relationship between cremation arrangements and levels of grief. Bereaved people in the UK completed questionnaires 2 to 5 months post-loss and a ye…
Supporting bereaved students at university
Bereaved university students in the UK are an overlooked population in research, policy, and practice. In this article, we examine the implications of this neglect via (1) international literature on bereavement in young people; (2) international literature on bereavement in higher education students; (3) UK and US literature on workplace bereavement and its implications for universities in preparing the future workforce; and (4) findings from a …
Cremation and Grief
Funeral services are known to serve multiple functions for bereaved persons. There is also a common, intuitively reasonable assumption of positive associations between engaging in funeral activities and adjustment to bereavement. We examined whether restricting ceremonial cremation arrangements to a minimum has a negative association with grief over time. Bereaved persons in the United Kingdom completed questionnaires 2 to 5 months postloss and a…
From cradle to grave
While death features widely in various humanities and some social science disciplines, to date it has not been given the attention it deserves in social policy discourse or research. This paper sets out to begin to rectify that omission. Outlining a range of policy areas affected by death, it argues that budget and outcome-driven priorities in the UK have resulted in the evolution of disconnected and inconsistent policy responses to death. The pa…
We Don't Want to Go and Be Idle Ducks
At present, end-of-life research, policy and practice typically prioritise the dying individual and consider the family an orbiting static unit. Sociological theorising of dying has reflected this trend, focusing on the macro-level and public rather than private sphere, with sociologists engaged in the study of family and relationships overlooking the end of life altogether. In addressing this gap, this article argues that the end of life is a re…
Family and funerals
This article explores a number of relational features of a contemporary funeral: content, participation, and commercial choice. In so doing, it uses Finch and Mason's concept of reflexive relationalism to show that the contemporary funeral is an event when familial relationships can be (re)affirmed and rejected. This "doing" of family has methodological implications for the future study of funerals and, it is argued here, this necessarily require…
Funerals and families
Situated at the intersection of the Sociology of Death and Sociology of the Family, this paper argues that the organization and funding of funerals is an overlooked and available lens through which to examine cultural and political norms of familial obligation. Drawing on interviews with claimants to the Department for Work and Pensions' Social Fund Funeral Payment, the paper shows how both responsibility for the organization and payment of a fun…
Disposal or dispersal? Environmentalism and final treatment of the British dead
In current environmental discourse, disposal does not remove and destroy waste but rather transforms it into something useful or harmful and/or re-locates it. This article shows how this operates when the ‘waste’ comprises human remains, specifically how innovative ‘dispersal’ practices are now challenging the ‘disposal’ discourse of nineteenth-century burial and twentieth-century cremation which contained the dead within special death spaces sep…
From the Cradle to the Grave
This article reports on a pilot study examining funeral welfare for citizens from low income backgrounds. Through a review of funeral welfare provision in 12 capitalist democratic countries it seeks to inform the current system of state support in B ritain, arguing that insufficient attention has been given to funeral costs as a policy issue. Mindful of the B ritish welfare state's original ‘cradle to grave’ ethos, such attention is ever more pre…
A missing link? The role of mortuary staff in hospital-based bereavement care services
In this paper we argue that anatomical pathology technologists (APTs) have been overlooked as a key group of healthcare practitioners who play a role in bereavement care. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a mortuary team in a large urban hospital, we examine the technical and emotional components of the APT role, including how the concept of patient care is utilised in the mortuary. We argue that their work with other healthcare practition…
Opportunities and barriers to forming a professional identity
The status of funeral directors, including whether or not the industry can be considered a legitimate ‘profession’, has long been a topic of interest in this journal. Contributing to this ongoing debate, this paper considers opportunities and barriers to professional development in the UK funeral industry. In so doing, the paper makes particular reference to ‘communities of practice’ (CP), a model of situated learning. Previous research in compar…
What cost the price of a good send off? The challenges for British state funeral policy
The period immediately after death has often been overlooked in British social policy, particularly in relation to funerals. The challenges presented by projected increases in the death rate owing to the ageing UK population mean that greater attention to state support for funding funerals is required. This article examines issues around current provision of state support for funerals via the Social Fund Funeral Payment, exploring potential failu…
DDB 2012 Report for Journal of Illness, Crisis & Loss
Putting 'The Grave' into Social Policy
There is a long tradition in the assessment of UK social policy of examining benefit entitlement and access, yet little attention has been paid towards benefits associated with bereavement and, in particular, what happens for those people who cannot afford a funeral and require state assistance. This is despite the fact that every year approximately one in ten deaths in the UK results in a claim to the Department for Work and Pensions' Funeral Pa…
A Golden Silence? Acts of Remembrance and Commemoration at U.K. Football Games
This article reviews the use of minute’s silences and applause at football (soccer) games in the United Kingdom, considering why acts of remembrance take place and for whom. Examining the variation in commemoration, the article explores the extent to which these acts serve as liminal events to reinforce or diminish football fans’ sense of (“fictive”) kinship and cohesion. Uncertainty about how to conduct them, and their purpose, is complicated by…
Using bereavement theory to understand memorialising behaviour
Two major theoretical approaches to bereavement – broadly categorised as psychological models of adaptation and the more socially orientated concept of continuing bonds – are often used to make sense of the experience of grief. This exploratory article, based on interviews with staff and visitors to one of the UK's largest municipal cemeteries, suggests that there is much scope for applying these theoretical concepts to memorialisation, in order …
Is it the end for anonymity as we know it? A critical examination of the ethical principle of anonymity in the context of 21st century demands on the qualitative researcher
Told from the perspective of two UK-based early career researchers, this article is an examination of contemporary challenges posed when dealing with the ethical principle of anonymity in qualitative research, specifically at the point of dissemination. Drawing on their respective doctoral experience and literature exploring the difficulties that can arise from the application of anonymity with regard to historical and geographical contexts, the …
Funerals and families
Situated at the intersection of the Sociology of Death and Sociology of the Family, this paper argues that the organization and funding of funerals is an overlooked and available lens through which to examine cultural and political norms of familial obligation. Drawing on interviews with claimants to the Department for Work and Pensions' Social Fund Funeral Payment, the paper shows how both responsibility for the organization and payment of a fun…
The Aftermath of Death in the Continuing Lives of the Living
While there is a significant interdisciplinary and international literature available on death, dying and bereavement, literature addressing responses to death is dominated by assumptions about individuality, framing 'bereavement' and 'grief' in terms of the inner psychic life of the individual. Scholarly literature tells us little about how the continuing aftermath of death is experienced in the everyday, relational lives of the living. Inspired…
Family and funerals
This article explores a number of relational features of a contemporary funeral: content, participation, and commercial choice. In so doing, it uses Finch and Mason's concept of reflexive relationalism to show that the contemporary funeral is an event when familial relationships can be (re)affirmed and rejected. This "doing" of family has methodological implications for the future study of funerals and, it is argued here, this necessarily require…
The Material Presence of Absence
This is an exploratory paper that aims to stimulate a dialogue between those interested in two particular spaces in society: the museum and the cemetery. Using empirical evidence from two research projects, the paper considers similarities and differences between the two sites, which are further explored through theoretical ideas about the social life of things and the agency of absence. Examining the materiality of these spaces, the paper addres…
We Don't Want to Go and Be Idle Ducks
At present, end-of-life research, policy and practice typically prioritise the dying individual and consider the family an orbiting static unit. Sociological theorising of dying has reflected this trend, focusing on the macro-level and public rather than private sphere, with sociologists engaged in the study of family and relationships overlooking the end of life altogether. In addressing this gap, this article argues that the end of life is a re…
Public Dying
Abundant in books, on television, in film, on the internet, and in newspapers and magazines, in the twenty‐first century death is hugely accessible. Within recent years, sociologists have responded to this visibility by examining death in the media, including its role and status in popular culture and ‘public mourning’, seen for example following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. This article considers a third strand of death in the …
A Golden Silence? Acts of Remembrance and Commemoration at U.K. Football Games
This article reviews the use of minute’s silences and applause at football (soccer) games in the United Kingdom, considering why acts of remembrance take place and for whom. Examining the variation in commemoration, the article explores the extent to which these acts serve as liminal events to reinforce or diminish football fans’ sense of (“fictive”) kinship and cohesion. Uncertainty about how to conduct them, and their purpose, is complicated by…
From the Cradle to the Grave
This article reports on a pilot study examining funeral welfare for citizens from low income backgrounds. Through a review of funeral welfare provision in 12 capitalist democratic countries it seeks to inform the current system of state support in B ritain, arguing that insufficient attention has been given to funeral costs as a policy issue. Mindful of the B ritish welfare state's original ‘cradle to grave’ ethos, such attention is ever more pre…
Putting 'The Grave' into Social Policy
There is a long tradition in the assessment of UK social policy of examining benefit entitlement and access, yet little attention has been paid towards benefits associated with bereavement and, in particular, what happens for those people who cannot afford a funeral and require state assistance. This is despite the fact that every year approximately one in ten deaths in the UK results in a claim to the Department for Work and Pensions' Funeral Pa…
Researching death
As an academic subject of study, death has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Yet unlike other topics in the social sciences, death occupies a rather unique status as a research topic. A universal concern that affects everyone, this paper asks whether it is therefore ever possible to achieve a scholarly ‘critical distance’ from studying a place or people associated with death. Drawing on the author’s experience of undertaking an ethn…
My Memories of the Time We Had Together Are More Important
Funerals have long been of interest to social scientists. Previous sociological work has examined the relationship between individuality, belief and tradition within funeral services, founded on the assumption that public rituals have psycho-social benefit for organisers and attendees. With the introduction of direct cremation to the UK, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on funeral service attendance in 2020 and 2021, critique of this assum…
Exploring the impact of group work and mentoring for multiple heritage children's self-esteem, well-being and behaviour
Findings are reported from a study of an innovative Multiple Heritage Service in Sheffield (UK) which provides, inter alia, individual mentoring for young people and school-based group sessions on cultural heritage, dealing with racism and enhancing well-being. Group work, undertaken between November 2005 and December 2006, was evaluated by a before/after design with 43 children aged from 8 to 15 attending five different groups (response rate 77%…
Caring for the dead at home
At a time when the natural death and home deathcare movements are gaining traction both in the UK and elsewhere, this article details an exploratory project on the barriers to and potential for caring for deceased people at home in England. A two-phase study, the paper uses data from a discourse analysis and interviews with deathcare professionals to show that there is limited information online on keeping the deceased person at home, and that pa…
Remembering and Narrativising Covid-19
How the COVID-19 pandemic, and the deaths that occurred during the acute phase of the pandemic (2020-2021), will be remembered is yet to be determined. Writing from a UK perspective, this short article reflects on the way in which memory, narratives and death are constructed, contested and (re)produced. Drawing on the authors' respective sociological sub-fields, it makes a case for an ongoing sociological appraisal of emergent COVID-19 narratives…
My life after death
This paper is an account of an emotional journey that took place alongside an ethnographic study of the contemporary cemetery landscape. It seeks to highlight the importance of conducting empirical research as a 'rite of passage', leading to the role of a researcher, by examining the connection between data, the human researcher, and the analysis. Furthermore, this paper argues that the emotionality of the research process needs to be incorporate…
My life after death
This paper is an account of an emotional journey that took place alongside an ethnographic study of the contemporary cemetery landscape. It seeks to highlight the importance of conducting empirical research as a 'rite of passage', leading to the role of a researcher, by examining the connection between data, the human researcher, and the analysis. Furthermore, this paper argues that the emotionality of the research process needs to be incorporate…
Funeraire 2005, Report on the Salon Professionnel International de l'Art Funeraire, Paris, Le Bourget
Death's door
Death's door: Modern dying and the way we grieve. By SANDRA M. GILBERT, W.W. Norton & Company, London, 2006, 580pp., US$29.95, hardback (ISBN 0393051315). At the beginning of this book, the author
Exploring the impact of group work and mentoring for multiple heritage children's self-esteem, well-being and behaviour
Findings are reported from a study of an innovative Multiple Heritage Service in Sheffield (UK) which provides, inter alia, individual mentoring for young people and school-based group sessions on cultural heritage, dealing with racism and enhancing well-being. Group work, undertaken between November 2005 and December 2006, was evaluated by a before/after design with 43 children aged from 8 to 15 attending five different groups (response rate 77%…
The Material Presence of Absence
This is an exploratory paper that aims to stimulate a dialogue between those interested in two particular spaces in society: the museum and the cemetery. Using empirical evidence from two research projects, the paper considers similarities and differences between the two sites, which are further explored through theoretical ideas about the social life of things and the agency of absence. Examining the materiality of these spaces, the paper addres…
Reflecting on death
This paper considers some of the issues encountered when researching a particular space in which death is engaged: a cemetery landscape. Building on literature available on research and reflexivity, the paper addresses some of the challenges the author dealt with when both in and away from the cemetery field site. At the core of the paper is the recognition that emotional responses can both contribute and distract from the research process. It is…
The Matter of Death
This collection opens up spaces where lives end, bodies are disposed of and memories generated: hospitals, hospices, care homes, coroners' courts, funeral premises, cemeteries, roadsides, the spirit w
Public Dying
Abundant in books, on television, in film, on the internet, and in newspapers and magazines, in the twenty‐first century death is hugely accessible. Within recent years, sociologists have responded to this visibility by examining death in the media, including its role and status in popular culture and ‘public mourning’, seen for example following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. This article considers a third strand of death in the …
Researching death
As an academic subject of study, death has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Yet unlike other topics in the social sciences, death occupies a rather unique status as a research topic. A universal concern that affects everyone, this paper asks whether it is therefore ever possible to achieve a scholarly ‘critical distance’ from studying a place or people associated with death. Drawing on the author’s experience of undertaking an ethn…
British Sociological Association (BSA) Study Group Symposium
Using bereavement theory to understand memorialising behaviour
Two major theoretical approaches to bereavement – broadly categorised as psychological models of adaptation and the more socially orientated concept of continuing bonds – are often used to make sense of the experience of grief. This exploratory article, based on interviews with staff and visitors to one of the UK's largest municipal cemeteries, suggests that there is much scope for applying these theoretical concepts to memorialisation, in order …
Sustaining the contemporary cemetery
Cemeteries garner considerable academic attention as anthropologists, landscapers, archaeologists, sociologists, geographers and historians examine their layout, purpose and use. Emerging from these studies is a body of literature that considers cemetery and burial ground design, memorialisation, mourning behaviour and 'dark tourism'. Beyond interdisciplinary journals such as Mortality and edited multi-disciplinary books however, the insight gene…
Is it the end for anonymity as we know it? A critical examination of the ethical principle of anonymity in the context of 21st century demands on the qualitative researcher
Told from the perspective of two UK-based early career researchers, this article is an examination of contemporary challenges posed when dealing with the ethical principle of anonymity in qualitative research, specifically at the point of dissemination. Drawing on their respective doctoral experience and literature exploring the difficulties that can arise from the application of anonymity with regard to historical and geographical contexts, the …
A Golden Silence? Acts of Remembrance and Commemoration at U.K. Football Games
This article reviews the use of minute’s silences and applause at football (soccer) games in the United Kingdom, considering why acts of remembrance take place and for whom. Examining the variation in commemoration, the article explores the extent to which these acts serve as liminal events to reinforce or diminish football fans’ sense of (“fictive”) kinship and cohesion. Uncertainty about how to conduct them, and their purpose, is complicated by…
A missing link? The role of mortuary staff in hospital-based bereavement care services
In this paper we argue that anatomical pathology technologists (APTs) have been overlooked as a key group of healthcare practitioners who play a role in bereavement care. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a mortuary team in a large urban hospital, we examine the technical and emotional components of the APT role, including how the concept of patient care is utilised in the mortuary. We argue that their work with other healthcare practition…
Opportunities and barriers to forming a professional identity
The status of funeral directors, including whether or not the industry can be considered a legitimate ‘profession’, has long been a topic of interest in this journal. Contributing to this ongoing debate, this paper considers opportunities and barriers to professional development in the UK funeral industry. In so doing, the paper makes particular reference to ‘communities of practice’ (CP), a model of situated learning. Previous research in compar…
What cost the price of a good send off? The challenges for British state funeral policy
The period immediately after death has often been overlooked in British social policy, particularly in relation to funerals. The challenges presented by projected increases in the death rate owing to the ageing UK population mean that greater attention to state support for funding funerals is required. This article examines issues around current provision of state support for funerals via the Social Fund Funeral Payment, exploring potential failu…
DDB 2012 Report for Journal of Illness, Crisis & Loss
Putting 'The Grave' into Social Policy
There is a long tradition in the assessment of UK social policy of examining benefit entitlement and access, yet little attention has been paid towards benefits associated with bereavement and, in particular, what happens for those people who cannot afford a funeral and require state assistance. This is despite the fact that every year approximately one in ten deaths in the UK results in a claim to the Department for Work and Pensions' Funeral Pa…
Disposal or dispersal? Environmentalism and final treatment of the British dead
In current environmental discourse, disposal does not remove and destroy waste but rather transforms it into something useful or harmful and/or re-locates it. This article shows how this operates when the ‘waste’ comprises human remains, specifically how innovative ‘dispersal’ practices are now challenging the ‘disposal’ discourse of nineteenth-century burial and twentieth-century cremation which contained the dead within special death spaces sep…
From the Cradle to the Grave
This article reports on a pilot study examining funeral welfare for citizens from low income backgrounds. Through a review of funeral welfare provision in 12 capitalist democratic countries it seeks to inform the current system of state support in B ritain, arguing that insufficient attention has been given to funeral costs as a policy issue. Mindful of the B ritish welfare state's original ‘cradle to grave’ ethos, such attention is ever more pre…
Funerals and families
Situated at the intersection of the Sociology of Death and Sociology of the Family, this paper argues that the organization and funding of funerals is an overlooked and available lens through which to examine cultural and political norms of familial obligation. Drawing on interviews with claimants to the Department for Work and Pensions' Social Fund Funeral Payment, the paper shows how both responsibility for the organization and payment of a fun…
Family and funerals
This article explores a number of relational features of a contemporary funeral: content, participation, and commercial choice. In so doing, it uses Finch and Mason's concept of reflexive relationalism to show that the contemporary funeral is an event when familial relationships can be (re)affirmed and rejected. This "doing" of family has methodological implications for the future study of funerals and, it is argued here, this necessarily require…
From cradle to grave
While death features widely in various humanities and some social science disciplines, to date it has not been given the attention it deserves in social policy discourse or research. This paper sets out to begin to rectify that omission. Outlining a range of policy areas affected by death, it argues that budget and outcome-driven priorities in the UK have resulted in the evolution of disconnected and inconsistent policy responses to death. The pa…
We Don't Want to Go and Be Idle Ducks
At present, end-of-life research, policy and practice typically prioritise the dying individual and consider the family an orbiting static unit. Sociological theorising of dying has reflected this trend, focusing on the macro-level and public rather than private sphere, with sociologists engaged in the study of family and relationships overlooking the end of life altogether. In addressing this gap, this article argues that the end of life is a re…
Sociology (28 obras) · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health (23 obras) · Political science (19 obras) · Law (15 obras) · Psychology (15 obras) · Social science (13 obras) · Law (11 obras) · History (9 obras) · Epistemology (8 obras) · Medicine (8 obras)