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SARAH HAYES ‘A Lost workforce now found: uncovering Newman Brothers in 1921’ ‘The Coffin Works, Birmingham’. SARAH HAYES is Museum Manager of the Coffin Works, Birmingham.
DR DAN O’BRIEN ‘Ticket to ride…to a funeral’: Funerary cards in eighteenth century England’ DAN O’BRIEN is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath. His research focuses on the undertaking trade and their products in eighteenth century England. This has included a detailed analysis of the early trade in the west of England, with a specific focus on the prosperous settlements of Bath, Bristol and Salisbury. His research also seeks to understand how the undertakers and their goods were perceived by society, by analysing how death and dying were presented in the popular culture of the period.
DR HELEN FRISBY ‘Picturing Death: Victorian Funeral Customs’ We’re all going to die – and ritual can help navigate the emotionally, socially and spiritually fraught transition from life to afterlife. From putting in the dead-bell to letting a soul out through the window, a ‘penny for St Peter’ to calling in the sin-eater, in this talk historian Helen explores through print and material culture the sometimes strange folk rituals by which the Victorians got their dead where they needed to go. Perhaps there’s something in there that we, in the present day, can learn from the past about dealing with death and the dead? HELEN FRISBY obtained her PhD on Victorian funeral customs from the University of Leeds in 2009. She’s currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Death & Society, University of Bath, continuing to research the history and folklore of death, dying and bereavement. Her most recently completed project, with Stuart Prior, documented the informal occupational culture of frontline cemetery staff. Helen is Secretary of the Association for the Study of Death & Society (ASDS) and a Council Member of the Folklore Society. Helen is author of Traditions of Death and Burial (Bloomsbury: 2019).
DR ANNA CUSAK ‘‘My body I commit to the Earth to be decently buryed ’: The Jewish Burial Grounds of Early Modern London’. ANNA CUSAK has recently completed her PhD on the marginalised dead of London, c.1600-1800, suicides, criminals, Quakers, and Jews. ECR board member for @HisJournalHA
TIMM SONNENSCHEIN ‘• (Full Stop) Insights of a Buddhist Son’ Timm/Alokavira will speak about his self-published photo book • (Full Stop) created not long after his father’s death in March 2020. Leading up to his father’s death Alokavira spent three weeks by his father’s side helping him to pass on. Throughout this intense time Alokavira applied his Buddhist practice in making sense of his own experience and to embrace and dedicate the needed strength to help his father as well as his overwhelmed mother. • is a photographic document of that time working both as a self-reflective process and a shared poetic insight into love, care and impermanence. TIMM SONNENSCHEIN is a German-born UK-based photographer, designer and educator. He is a member of the Triratna Buddhist Order and was given the name Alokavira (Sanskrit ‘Hero of Light’) during his ordination in 2004. His photographic work attempts to open a dialogue, which encourages empathetic insights that aim at strengthening dignity and respect within an often divided society. As a designer he has been creating contemporary designs within various Western Buddhist contexts. He is the designer and co-editor of Born of Fire and the Void Buddhist zine.