Guest bloggers Martin Hoondert & Janieke Bruin of Tilburg University in the Netherlands are creating a FUNERAL LAB to help funerary professionals work with mourners to create ‘good’ funerals. Development of the funeral lab Contemporary Dutch funeral rituals are characterized as personalized funerals. During these funerals, next of kin recall memories about the life of…
The End of the Beginning?
As the Remember Me Project winds down, the team looks back over three years of exploring aspects of remembrance and memorialisation, and ponder what the future holds. The Remember Me project is coming to a close after nearly 3 years of exploring the ways in which memorialisation has been practised in the past, is changing…
Glasgow Necropolis: image and memory
Guest-blogger, artist and writer, Alan John Campbell, has developed a fascination with memorialisation. His work at Glasgow Necropolis has been compiled into a poignant photographic essay. The images compiled into this photographic essay each express a narrative that taken as a total will hopefully be interesting and meaningful. Examining these images suggests that one aspect…
A journey through time – “Better by bike than by train.”
Guest blogger, Evelyn Rose, shares the story of two motorcycle journeys, across two centuries, to promote tolerance, understanding and to push back against injustice. In the late 19th Century, Max Nordau, a Hungarian physician, author and social critic, accompanied by Theodore Herzyl, witnessed rowdy crowds in the streets of Paris spewing “Sal Juif! Sal Juif!”…
Online Memorialisation: A developer’s view on being remembered forever in a virtual space.
Guest-blogger, James Duckett, explores some of the considerations in designing virtual memorial spaces from a developer’s perspective. The Memmori website opens with six simple words: Changing the way we remember. Forever. Those words are the core of our ambition, to explore the use of technology to reframe how, when and where we remember our loved…
From No Grave to a Pew
Guest-blogger, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen shares a very personal story of her father’s life, death and memorialisation: from Zwickau to Hull via Dresden, Eckernförde, and La Rochelle and his death near Kaliningrad. My father was born in 1914 but his wealthy parents went bankrupt twice after WW1. As a teenager he therefore assisted in the family bakery and…
End Notes
Guest-blogger, Ray French, introduces a new book (which you can download for free) exploring ways of dealing with mourning and bereavement. Death is a frightening subject to contemplate alone, but when we share our fears and experiences of it that fear often breaks down. That was what we hoped to achieve when we held 3…
Free-writing Case Study Report Now Available
The final report on the Remember Me project’s research case study examining free-writing practices in palliative care is now available. In experiences of bereavement, people hold on to their loved ones, creating continuing bonds and ongoing relationships with the departed. Many hospices offer Memorial books through which these relationships can be expressed and maintained in…
The Watery Grave: Death at Sea on Voyages to New Zealand, 1840-80
In the latest contribution to our Conference Showcase Series, guest-blogger Associate Professor Lydon Fraser, explores the ways in which death at sea was managed on the long sea voyages to New Zealand during the Victorian era. David Carr, writing aboard the Lyttelton-bound Lancashire Witch in 1863, solemnly recorded ‘a morning of greate mortality’ on the…
Commemorating White Armband Day Transnationally and in Virtual Spaces
Our Conference Showcase Series continues. Guest blogger Johanna Paul writes about the emergence of White Armband Day (Dan Bijelih Traka), a commemoration day related to the war crimes committed in Prijedor during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995). Prijedor is notorious for ethnic cleansing, concentrations camps and displacement in the early days of the war in…
Remember Me Memorial Trail
In association with the Remember Me Conference (4-7 April, 2018) we have developed a memorial walking trail around Hull City Centre, which you download and follow. Memorial Trail PDF Our trail document is a downloadable PDF in A3 format (which can also be legibly printed at A4 size). If you have a smartphone, you can…
Shaping Disaster Memorialisation through Media Coverage
As our Conference Showcase Series continues, guest blogger Professor Marina Brancato, explores the complex relationship between media reporting of disaster and memorialisation in the context of Italian earthquakes. An earthquake is a natural and cultural event and a particular moment in the history of a community because the ontological security of human beings is brought…
Remember Me. The Changing Face of Memorialisation 