Sunday, 29 March 2015

Auto/Biographical Reflections on Grief and Bereavement | Bathwater, Babies and Other Losses



This week I had an article published in a journal entitled Mortality: Promoting the interdisciplinary study of death and dying

My piece is entitled:  Bathwater, babies and other losses: a personal and academic story.

This is the abstract:

In this article, I provide a sociologically informed auto/biographical account of my experience of grief and griefwork following the death of my husband William John Shiels (1948–2010) and my parents Ronald (Ron) Thornton (1923–1979) and Dorothy Thornton (1931–2012). Additionally, I discuss my personal, and academic, experience with reference to ‘infertility’ and ‘involuntary childlessness’. I reflect on the significance of my sociological imagination for the griefwork I do myself and with others and I consider how my experience of reproductive loss led me to sociology and how in turn sociology has influenced my experience of loss. In this piece, as in others I have written, I make epistemological connections between my academic work and my personal experience. I also reflect on the use of creative methodologies and different ways to tell academic stories and contribute to this approach.


As this suggests my piece includes some reflection on personal experiences, some research stories and some examples of short fiction that I have written. If you would like to read the article please follow this link.

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