John Troyer

John Troyer started his post at the University of Bath in September 2008. He is Director of the Centre for Death and Society,  an RCUK Research Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences. John received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. His Ph.D. dissertation, entitled "Technologies of the Human Corpse" was awarded the University of Minnesota's 2006 Best Dissertation Award in the Arts and Humanities. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of death studies, John focuses on delineating and defining the concept of the dead human subject. John is in the closing stages of a case study looking at mercury emissions and heat capture technology in UK crematoria.

Research interests

• The social and technological control of the dead body in both time and space vis-à-vis mechanical manipulation of human biology.
• The legal, scientific and medical protocols that determine social policies, for example, those which pronounce a time of death for human beings.
• The illicit, global trade in human tissues and body parts.
• Aesthetics and death.

Case study

Public engagement with research case study