"Something as simple as breathing in shared indoor spaces has become a barrier to accessibility and inclusion for millions of people, and it's time to change that!"

🚨🚨🚨The CfP for the 2025 BSA #Death, #Dying and #Bereavement symposium is now open! This year's theme is #Care and #Caring, and the University of Nottingham is hosting us. Please submit your abstracts by Tuesday 30th September to [email protected]. We're looking forward to reading them!

Are you interested in death, dying, loss, grief, and related topics, from historical studies to current issues? Then I'd recommend following @openthanatology.bsky.social and keeping an eye out for resources it shares.

The relentless contempt, disgust, even hate that successive UK governments exhibit for the country's (hitherto) wildly successful HE sector remains one of the most baffling sub-plots of a generally insane age.

I spoke to the Irish Times for this very good and rounded piece on the real-world effects of C***GPT in the humanities classroom: www.irishtimes.com/ireland/educ...

Was asked today to comment on how professionals learn about palliative care, & was struck by how the tensions I wrote about a decade ago still resonate with current trainees. Like how to 'care' but 'not too much' and wanting to still 'fix' something in the face of death. Links to papers in comments

The new LeDeR report is now available. The 2023 annual report analyses the deaths of 3,556 people with a learning disability & autistic people who died in 2023. The work is part of efforts to reduce health inequalities. Access here: kcl.ac.uk/research/leder

Easy read and accessible versions of the LeDeR 2023 report are available to ensure findings reach everyone. These materials make research accessible to people with a learning disability, their families, and carers. Here is the video made by the Staying Alive and Well Group youtu.be/qRUdWqz20jg

“It’s very important that people read this report”. Find it here: www.kcl.ac.uk/research/leder

Be one of the first to order. Launching today! (UK only - other countries can still freely download and print at home) Order link is in this short video. Please share! youtu.be/VrntRIJCdXY?... @andreabruun.bsky.social @mariecurieuk.bsky.social

Do join us for a discussion about death hosted by Bethan Michael-Fox and me www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/meet-up-gr...

Worth noting this is a *hybrid* conference - and one of the best I have attended online too. Might just be a coincidence that a conference on dying and death is so practically attuned to the diversity, climate and airborne disease challenges facing academia 👀 #DDD17

Improving hospital discharge is one of the Top 24 JLA priorities for palliative and end of life care research - mariecurie.org.uk/blog/researc... It is also a key part of our recent Research Grants Scheme - www.mariecurie.org.uk/research-and...

The government's 10 Year Health Plan for England highlights the need to shift care from hospital to community. Discharge from specialist palliative care in hospital to community services and primary care is a poorly understood transition. Yet it is a key part of the end of life experience for many.

Dr Katharine Weetman, Marie Curie Associate Professor Dr John MacArtney and team have recently published findings on the challenges posing current discharge processes, identifying patient experiences and highlighting suggestions for healthcare professionals, summarised below.

Latest paper with Katherine Weetman et al. on improving specialist palliative care discharge: bmcpalliatcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... @nihr.bsky.social @warwickmed.bsky.social @mariecurieeolc.bsky.social @mariecurieuk.bsky.social @hospiceuk.bsky.social @nhscovwarksicb.bsky.social 1/

Latest paper with Katherine Weetman et al. on improving specialist palliative care discharge: bmcpalliatcare.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... @nihr.bsky.social @warwickmed.bsky.social @mariecurieeolc.bsky.social @mariecurieuk.bsky.social @hospiceuk.bsky.social @nhscovwarksicb.bsky.social 1/

🎯🎯🎯 article on #Covid's impact on the immune system, written by @nicktsergas.ca in TheBMJ: Why scientists are rethinking the immune effects of SARS-CoV-2 | The BMJ (Aug 19, 2025) www.bmj.com/content/390/...

The CSA is pushing for mandatory respirators in healthcare settings, something which should have happened years ago. Covid changed the game, and we must adapt. Once upon a time handwashing wasn’t standard in hospitals. Gloves weren’t standard until the HIV/AIDS pandemic. 🧵

This is what the audience for a Long COVID conference looked like today. Notice anything? 😷

If you’re still wearing a mask, thank you Thank you for standing in solidarity with disabled & high risk people Thank you for practicing community care Thank you for following the science & seeing the value in breaking chains of transmission Thank you protecting your health Thank you.

Do you use #ventilation (bipap/trach/NIV)? Are you interested in theatre? Are you within reach of London? Would you like to work on, or star in, a new adaption of Romeo & Juliet while adding to research on what it means to be ventilated? Find out more at www.cripticarts.org/R&J

Very sad to learn that long-standing colleague Mike Bury has passed away. RIP

Data is collected on several healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) posing significant threat to public health. We think government should ensure policy on management of HCAIs is extended to include recording data on COVID infections spread within hospitals. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...

4. Chronic illness is an economic category as much as a medical one. Every diagnosis comes with a price tag: who pays, who profits, and who is left to ‘manage’ themselves. The market extracts from our sickness while calling it ‘care.’

When you do history of medicine it's every other retired doctor and it is both wrong and tedious

This is why I remind people that 90% uptake is still very high (just not, epidemiologically, high *enough*). Because we need to remember the vast majority of parents comply *when vaccination is made accessible and health professionals have the time to work with parents who might have concerns*.

“COVID-19 infection had a significant impact on patients with cancer, and risk factors for hospitalization and mortality were identified.” jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Anyway, every day's an Ian Hacking day: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v2...

Big fan of social science that's, like, "there are seven kinds of person."

New article in Social Theory & Health, co-authored with @judegreen.bsky.social, open access. In a nutshell we argue that that lived-experience research is not the same as qualitative sociology in health research. The difference exists and matters. Read here: rdcu.be/evZ7F

Student antiracist activists working with Hannah Jones @uncomfiest.bsky.social& Anna Numa Hopkins in Warwick Sociology, have created an online archive of student-led #antiracist activism, to pass on experiences and knowledge to future generations in #HigherEducation : warwickantiracism.org

I am THRILLED to have a new article with Emma Kirby in @societyandspace.bsky.social Focused on Queering the Map, we analyse how people contribute to this queer mapping of life – and become cartographic queers 📍💜 Open access: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... @emmawatsonkirby.bsky.social

Missed our conference opening plenary with @ericaborgstrom.bsky.social and @johnmacartney.bsky.social? You can now watch it here ⬇️ www.bath.ac.uk/campaigns/mo...

Resources and recordings now available for our recent event on advance care planning. You can find them in the Open Thanatology Resources repository doi.org/10.21954/ou....

If you are a GP and would be willing to help a Master's student with their research project please read below! It is a really interesting topic and one I think participants will enjoy exploring! 😊 #PEOLC #PrimaryCare

Visit the toolkit -https://www.mariecurie.org.uk/research-and-policy/research/mens-shed And if you're interested in starting a Men's Shed in your hospice, please email [email protected]

@johnmacartney.bsky.social and Research Nurse Rachel Perry have shown the benefits of Men's Sheds in hospices. Their funding will allow them to share their toolkit and host workshops to help hospices set up their own Men's Sheds.

🏅Announcing our awarded Research Impact Grants - 6/6 An essential part of the service: Increasing the impact of Hospice Men's Sheds to benefit men’s wellbeing

If you a clinician working in palliative care and concerned about how the issues discussed in this excellent presentation 👇 are affecting the quality-of-life left of people with life-limiting illnesses... Drop me a line (email or DM)

Check it out at: ddd17.sites.uu.nl/programme/

In BMJ Global Health, open access: epistemic preparedness. We argue for the social sciences and the humanities - expanding the category of expert - in preparing for the next pandemic! #pandemic #epidemiology #histstm #histmed #sts @nam.edu @humanitiesau.bsky.social @acmedsci.bsky.social @apha.org

Following the vote on Friday in Parliament about assisted dying, here's a short piece I wrote for The Conversation about some of the remaining complexities when we look at how people currently struggle with prognostication and planning ahead. theconversation.com/assisted-dyi... #AssistedDying #eolc

New paper out - Home death as a conditional ideal: ethnographic insights from an English hospital. Written with Jennifer Rogerson, published in Mortality. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

A great blog post about Revisiting access and inclusion in research methods by our project friends in the Wellcome Anti-Ableist Research Culture (WAARC) project at the University of Sheffield. www.ncrm.ac.uk/news/show.ph...

As MPs will vote tomorrow on assisted dying in Westminster, here's a reminder that Inside Health (BBC Radio 4) have 3 episodes exploring the nuances of assisted dying and the current proposals (including some areas that lack clarity) www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

We started working on this in 2021 and there is *finally* a physical copy of the book in my hand. It feels great that other people can now read all the great work that's in this collection. It is available as a free e-book and in paperback: bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/recalibratin...

...these are conversations we cannot & do not want to avoid [...] we need to find a way to sensitively consider proximity to death and the fragility of life as a reality in our work' - Julie Ellis www.sheffield.ac.uk/cripping-bre... @pathfindersnma.bsky.social @cripticarts.bsky.social

It was a real honour and pleasure to open CDAS conference this year. Join @ericaborgstrom.bsky.social and I for a "meet the speakers" workshop at 12:50 today to explore some of the issues social sciences and humanities scholars can face when working in multi-disciplinary research spaces. #CDAS20