Death, Dying and Bereavement: New Sociological Perspectives

Sharon Mallon is a senior lecturer in mental health at the University of Staffordshire, UK. She is an experienced qualitative researcher who specialises in projects focused on bereavement and mental health, particularly suicide postvention and prevention, the gendered, social approaches to understanding death by suicide and the wider impact of suicide bereavement on different bereaved groups. She has also developed a strong interest in the emotional impact of researching sensitive subjects on researchers. She was awarded her PhD for a qualitative study of young adults’ suicides from the perspective of their friends. She is co-editor of Preventing and Responding to Student Suicide: A Practical Guide for FE and HE Settings (Jessica Kingsley, 2021), Narratives of COVID: Loss, Dying, Death and Grief during COVID-19 (Kindle Direct Publishing, 2021) and Unpacking Sensitive Research: Epistemological and Methodological Implications (Routledge, 2022).

Laura Towers is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Sociology Department at the University of Manchester, UK, and a Visiting Research Fellow to the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath, UK. In a project titled ‘Storying the Unspeakable: Narrating the Experiences of Siblings Bereaved by Suicide’, Laura is using a relational approach to consider how siblings bereaved by suicide understand and make sense of their loss over time through narratives of personal experience. She also recently carried out research in partnership with Hospice UK, looking at people’s experiences at work when caring for someone who is dying. Overall, Laura is keen to explore the social nature of grief, loss and bereavement, emphasising the longevity of these experiences. She was co-convenor of the British Sociological Association’s Social Aspects of Death, Dying and Bereavement Study Group between 2017 and 2022.