Tony Walter

I was a freelance scholar from 1975 - 1994, writing books on the treatment of young offenders, religion and society, landscape, unemployment, social security, basic income, and the concept of need.

On re-entering academia in 1994, I worked as Lecturer, then Reader, in Sociology at the University of Reading. Since 2006, I have been Professor of Death Studies at the University of Bath, including four years (2011-15) as director of the Centre for Death & Society www.bath.ac.uk/cdas. At both universities I set up and directed a Masters course in Death & Society.

Since the early 1990s, my writing and lecturing have focussed on developing a sociological understanding of death in modern society. In this, I have collaborated with colleagues in religious studies, history, archaeology, linguistics, psychology, geography, computer science, medicine, social work, and gerontology. Research areas have included: 

• funerals
• pilgrimage
• afterlife beliefs
• personal bereavement and public mourning
• the portrayal of death in the news media
• collective memory
• human remains in museums
• end of life care and neo-liberalism
• discourses of spirituality
• social networks at the end of life
• mediations between the living and the dead
• how the internet shapes dying and grieving.
• the role of angels in mourning
• space and place

My most recent books are:

- What Death Means Now (Polity Press, 2017). This short-form book discusses contemporary issues in death, dying, funerals and bereavement.    https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/what-death-means-now. 

- Death in the Modern World (Sage, 2020). This global book focusses on national, cultural and environmental variations in how death is managed in the modern world.    https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/death-in-the-modern-world/book255329. 

I have also helped Civil Ceremonies Ltd http://www.civilceremonies.co.uk/  and the Church of England to provide funeral training for celebrants and clergy.

My current interest is the climate/ecological emergency and the death of species, including our own, to which it points and that it seeks to avert.