Praxis Orientated Research During the Covid-19 lockdown a common lament from colleagues and friends working for charities and voluntary projects has been the increased number of approaches they have had from researchers hoping to recruit the people they have been assisting on a daily basis, and how inappropriate this has felt for them. Comments such… Continue reading
Back in March 2019, a group of researchers from the UK and Japan gathered in Dumfries to launch the Mitori Project. The ESRC funded project aims to examine end of life care issues in the UK and Japan in three workstreams: ‘Culture’, ‘Practice’ and ‘Policy’. Time flies! Six months have passed since the first workshop.… Continue reading
We are all aware of the headlines about the impact of government austerity measures on communities up and down the UK. But what impact has austerity had on people’s experiences of dying and, specifically, their ability to die in their own home? What is it like to be facing death in materially constrained circumstances in… Continue reading
When our Japanese colleagues arrived in Scotland in early spring for the launch of a new collaborative research project, I was delighted to see the interest they took in the cherry blossom that was starting to appear around our Dumfries campus. As our week together unfolded, the beauty of the trees appeared to match the… Continue reading
Led by Professor David Clark, Professor Devi Vijay, Dr Ben Colburn, and Dr Jennifer Corns, and funded by the Scottish Funding Council, under its scheme for the Global Challenges Research Fund, this project will be the first to develop an evaluation model that can be used to assess the quality and outcomes of community palliative… Continue reading
In November 2018 the End of Life Studies Group exhibited a series of drawings by a renowned Scottish artist showing powerful glimpses of death and dying. The exhibition was shown at the Yellow Door Gallery in Dumfries as part of the UK wide Being Human festival of the Arts & Humanities, and we were responding to the 2018 theme… Continue reading
In summer 2018 I spotted a call from the Economic and Social Research Council seeking proposals to build collaboration between researchers in Japan and the United Kingdom, with no constraints on the subject matter. It looked an interesting opportunity. I quickly reached out to my Japanese colleague the philosopher Hirobumi Takenouchi and within a few… Continue reading
One of Dame Cicely Saunders’ most enduring legacies is the importance of being present, of witnessing, at the end of life. Academic witnessing at the margins of life and death can require balancing an intense intimacy with simultaneously gaining enough distance to ‘see’ significant or representative broader concepts. What does this mean for us as… Continue reading
