Dr Naomi Richards
- Lecturer (School of Interdisciplinary Studies)
telephone:
001387702063
email:
Naomi.Richards@glasgow.ac.uk
Rutherford/McCowan Building, Dumfries Campus
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3029-5132Biography
Dr Naomi Richards is Director of the Glasgow End of Life Studies Group at the University of Glasgow.
Naomi is a Lecturer in End of Life Studies at the University of Glasgow. Prior to joining Glasgow in 2015, she held positions at the University of the West of Scotland and the University of Sheffield.
Naomi is a social anthropologist specialising in death and dying, ageing and old age, and visual and ethnographic methods. Over the last decade she has been funded by the ESRC to undertake empirical and theoretical investigations into the UK right-to-die debate and the phenomenon of old age rational suicide. She is currently principle investigator for the ESRC funded Dying in the Margins (2019-2022), a qualitative project aiming to uncover the reasons for unequal access to home dying for the socio-economically deprived. She is also involved in two Wellcome Trust funded case studies. The first examines the relationship between palliative care and assisted dying in three jurisdictions where the practice is lawful. The second examines the global transfer and translation of the Death Café phenomenon.
Over the years, Naomi has collaborated on research projects about: challenging stereotypes of older women; transitions to palliative care in the hospital setting; and sensory and palliative care approaches for people with advanced dementia.
She has a long-standing interest in documentary filmmaking and visual methods, stemming from a Masters in Visual Anthropology at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at Manchester University.
Naomi also co-convenes the Reading and Writing Death and Dying Arts Lab with Dr Elizabeth Reeder in Creative Writing. The Lab aims to support and encourage research and interdisciplinary collaboration across the College of Arts on the theme of death, dying and bereavement. You can find them on Twitter - @DeathWrites1
Research interests
- Cultural attitudes to death and dying
- End of life issues facing older people
- Dementia and end of life decision-making
- Assisted dying
- Centenarians and the 'oldest old'
- Socio-economic deprivation and end of life experiences
- Testimony, witnessing and narrative at the end of life
- Visual representations of older people
- Visual representations of death and dying
- Visual methods; Ethnographic methods
Grants
ESRC Large Grant Dying in the Margins: Uncovering the Reasons for Unequal Access to Home Dying for the Socio-Economically Deprived (2019-2022)
ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship award (2012-14)
Supervision
I welcome enquiries about supervision relating to my research interests in: anthropology of death and dying; assisted dying; community models of end of life care; inequalities at the end of life; dying in old age; the 'oldest old'; the ageing and dying continuum; concepts of suffering and 'total pain' at the end of life; visual or literary representations of ageing or dying; participatory visual methods.
I am currently supervising 4 PhD studies:
- Death café conversations
- Inequalities in death and dying – dying on the streets in the UK and US
- Examining ‘total pain’ in Palliative Care practice and policy
- Representing chosen death: how writers depict physician-assisted death, and suicide
- Lang, Julie
Representing death: how writers depict dying, death, choice and suicide. - Ward, Tracy
What is the role of the civil funeral celebrant in modern deathwork and how has COVID-19 impacted upon that role?
Teaching
I convene three courses on the MA Health & Social Policy Degree Programme:
- Global Challenges at the End of Life (DUMF2066)
- Society & Social Policy (DUMF1066)
- Placement (DUMF3068) International Placement (DUMF3069)
Additional information
- I am the Director of the Glasgow End of Life Studies Group
- I contribute to the End of Life Studies blog
- I am a member of the International Longevity Centre’s Early-Mid Career Research Panel. The ILC is an independent policy-focused think tank on longevity and population change.
