Covid-19 and Death Studies

Erica Borgstrom is a Professor of Medical Anthropology at The Open University in the United Kingdom. She was Mortality Co-Editor-in-Chief from 2020 to 2024.Bethan Michael-Fox is Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at The Open University in the United Kingdom. She has been the Mortality Managing Editor since 2020.Arnar Árnason is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. He is Mortality Co-Editor-in-Chief.

• Introduction 1. A thematic analysis investigating the impact of COVID-19 on the way people think and talk about death and dying 2. Photographic narratives of Covid-19 during Spain’s state of emergency: images of death, dying and grief 3. Death anxiety and materialism during the pandemic: investigating the role of personal experiences of COVID-19 4. Death acceptance among Lodha older adults: their perceptions of ‘good death’ during the COVID-19 pandemic 5. Wishes for a good death in context of the COVID-19 pandemic - perspective of older individuals living in Finland 6. ‘I can’t breathe’: the biopolitics and necropolitics of breath during 2020 7. Vaccinating capitalism: racialised value in the COVID-19 economy 8. Regulating exposure: routine deaths, work and the Covid crisis 9. Palliative accompaniment: biomedical and social resignification of dying during the COVID-19 pandemic 10. ‘Thank you for helping me remember a nightmare I wanted to forget’: qualitative interviews exploring experiences of death and dying during COVID-19 in the UK for nurses redeployed to ICU 11. Family narratives of loss and grief during the COVID-19 pandemic in Botswana 12. Life stories interrupted: an exploration of United States obituaries during the COVID-19 pandemic 13. ‘The most difficult time of my life’ or ‘COVID’s gift to me’? Differential experiences of COVID-19 funerary restrictions in Aotearoa New Zealand