What's the episode about?

In this episode, hear Dr Jessica Young on assisteddying, the New Zealand End of Life Choice Bill, culturally responsive research, end of life care and decision making, and sociological approaches.
Who is Jessica?

Dr Jessica Young is a Senior Research Fellow at Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Auckland, and an adjunct senior lecturer in the Australian Centre for Health Law Research, Queensland University of Technology.

She is a sociologist specialising in death, dying andassisted dying. She completed her PhD in 2020 at the University of Otago and received a prestigious post-doctoral fellowship from the Cancer Society of New Zealand.

Since the End of Life Choice Bill was introduced in NewZealand, Dr Young has been building a programme of research to investigate multiple facets of assisted dying.

She leads and contributes to several projects on assisteddying, most recently ‘Exploring the early experiences of the assisted dying service in Aotearoa’, funded by the Health Research Council. Dr Young has led impactful research in end-of-life care, securing over $3 million in competitive funding.

She is the founder and co-chair of New Zealand’sAssisted Dying Research Network and was appointed by the Director-General of Health to the Support and Consultation for End of Life in NZ (SCENZ) Group (2021–2023). Her work has directly shaped national policy: 13 of her team’s recommendations were adopted in the Ministry of Health’s 2024 End of Life Choice Act Review.

She has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles, six editorials, and three book chapters.

To ensure her research goes beyond academia, she activelyengages with media. She is passionate about improving end-of-life experiences for patients, whānau/families and health practitioners. Committed to ethical, inclusive, and culturally responsive research, she seeks to involve tangatawhenua (indigenous people of NZ), stakeholders and communities.

You can find Jessica on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-young-7097a722/

The book introduced in the episode introduction is Death, Commemoration, and Cultural Meaning Past and PresentEdited by Robert Spinelli and Robyn S. Lacy.

How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?

To cite this episode, you can use thefollowing citation:

Young, J. (2025) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 November 2025. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.30507878

What next?

Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts! Gota question? Get in touch.

What's the episode about?

In this episode, get an overview of the 2025 Death, Dying and Disposal Conference held in Utrecht in the Netherlands

What was the conference about?

The below information was taken from the conference website.

'Death is political and performs the political. This is evident not only in death itself, but also in the dead (who can become political actors), their bodies, the process of dying (which is, amongst others, infrastructurally related to political discourse and inequalities), and bereavement (which can also become apolitical act). The political aspects of this theme extend beyond national or international political institutions (such as governments, state actors, multinational corporations, or political or religious alliances) to encompass everybody and everything that has to do with (the exercise of) power andmoralities, e.g., families, kin, neighbourhoods, friendship networks.

Our time together at DDD17 – as a short, but hopefully (partly)lasting DDD17 community – has come to a close. Over these past days, we’ve explored, listened, debated, and imagined — and we want to thank you for bringing such openness and curiosity to the theme of the Politics of Death. This may be the end of the conference, but we hope it is only the beginning of conversations on this theme. Let’s continue them in whatever ways we can — in our research, our writing, our teaching, our work, our communities. We hope you are leaving as inspired as we are.

Thanks to everybody who made this conference what is has been. A conference is made by its participants – together we were a fantastic community.'

How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?

To cite this episode, you can use the following citation:

Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. (2025) DDD17. The DeathStudies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1October 2025. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com,DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.30256387

What next?

Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts! Got a question? Get in touch.

What's the episode about?

In this episode, hear Kaylee Alexander discuss the digital humanities, being a research data librarian, visual culture, cemeteries, French cemetery laws, cemetery sculpture, ethically sound data visualisation and survival bias

Who is Kaylee?

Dr. Kaylee P. Alexander is a Research Data Librarian at the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library.

She holds a Ph.D. in Art History and Visual Culture from Duke University and specializes in nineteenth-century visual culture, monuments, and funerary material culture.

Her research is embedded in transdisciplinary practices at the intersection of visual studies, cultural economics, sociology, and data science.

You can find a list of her publications on her website.

She is the author of A Data-Driven Analysis of Cemeteries and Social Reform in Paris, 1804–1924 (Routledge 2024).

How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists?

To cite this episode, you can use the following citation:

Alexander, K. (2025) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 1 August 2025. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.29763560

What next?

Check out more episodes or find out more about the hosts! Gota question? Get in touch.