Covid-19 and Death Studies: Multidisciplinary Perspectives and Lessons

This book examines the profound impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on how people experienced dying, death and bereavement from early 2020 onwards. This interdisciplinary collection draws together international examples rooted in empirical research from death studies scholars to make sense of these impacts. The collection includes a wide range of insights from how personal and societal responses to the pandemic shaped the ways people talked and thought about death, to the provision of palliative and intensive care, and changes in funerary practices. The book demonstrates how social responses to the pandemic shaped death in this historical moment and explores potential lasting legacies, such as altered rituals. Curated from articles originally published in the journal Mortality with a new preface by the editors, this collection showcases why death studies is crucial for understanding not only the COVID-19 pandemic but also future pandemics and mass death events.

This volume will be essential reading for students, scholars, healthcare professionals, public health researchers and grief counsellors in medical anthropology, medical humanities, thanatology, sociology, bereavement studies and palliative care.

The chapters in this book were originally published in Mortality.

Erica Borgstrom is a Professor of Medical Anthropology at The Open University in the United Kingdom. She was Mortality Co-Editor-in-Chief from 2020 to 2024.

Bethan Michael-Fox is Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at The Open University in the United Kingdom. She has been the Mortality Managing Editor since 2020.

Arnar Árnason is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. He is Mortality Co-Editor-in-Chief.