research

Crossing Over: New Narratives of Death

Exploring memorial practices and meaning

The Challenge

Our challenge: from 2012-2016 the multi-disciplinary AHRC Research Network "Crossing Over: New Narratives of Death" investigated the changing face of contemporary death, bereavement and commemoration. The Crossing Over follow on project, which gained AHRC funding in February 2017, aimed to bring the network's work to wider, non-academic audiences through three activities aimed at the general public:Two creative writing and archaeology workshops to be run in partnership with the voluntary organisation Calderdale Dying Matters Partnership.

The Approach

Our approach: we needed to publicize events dealing with mortality in a way that addressed the issues sensitively. The original idea was for all events to happen during Dying Matters Awareness Week 8-14th May, 2017. The creative workshops would draw on the archaeological expertise of Dr Melanie Giles and Dr Karina Croucher, using grave goods, to explore memorial practices and meaning. Kathleen Mckay would use the participants’ engagement with these objects in a creative writing workshop, to help them produce prose and poetry grounded in objects surrounding death and memorialisation.

Start and expected completion date

March 2017 - September 2017

 

Funding

The project is funded £21,348 by AHRC.

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