Grief — A Work in Progress : Collaborators

Dr. Kirsten Smith

Dr. Kirsten Smith (scientific advisor for workshops) is a clinical psychologist, a Wellcome Trust funded research fellow at the University of Oxford and trustee of the bereavement charity The Loss Foundation. She is responsible for The Oxford Grief Study, a large-scale investigation of the psychological processes involved in adaptation following bereavement. Her work focuses on memory processes, cognitions and coping behaviours in order to understand the factors that are associated with more complex or prolonged grief reactions. The aim of her research is to provide more effective and efficient support systems for those most affected.

Dr. Caitlin Hitchcock

Dr Caitlin Hitchcock (scientific advisor for workshops) is a clinical psychologist and Investigator Scientist on Professor Tim Dalgleish’s renowned team at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge. Her work focusses on how autobiographical memory may be influenced by the experience of trauma or mental health disorders. Drawing from the team’s previous experimental work, she has recently begun to explore the role of autobiographical memory in the development and maintenance of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder to develop novel treatment options which aim to improve memory distortions and symptoms of psychological disturbance.

Deborah Coughlin

Deborah Coughlin is a writer, producer and director. In 2009 she founded the acclaimed punk feminist choir, Gaggle, which was included in NME’s Top 50 Most Innovative Acts. She has been commissioned by amongst others, the Southbank Centre, the National Gallery, the Royal Albert Hall, the ICA, the Women’s Library, the Almeida Theatre and Radio 4. Deborah is also a reporter and contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and a feature writer for the Guardian Weekend Magazine.

Aarathi Prasad

Aarathi Prasad is the author of A Natural History of Silk, In the Bonesetter’s Waiting Room: travels through Indian Medicine and Like A Virgin: how science is redesigning the rules of sex. She was a contributing author to the short fiction series Tales on Tweet (2016) and What’s Next? : Even Scientists Can’t Predict the Future – Or Can They? She has written for the New York Times, Litro, the Guardian, Prospect, Wired, The Lancet, Huffington Post blogs, Vogue, Elle, The Telegraph and Scientific American. Aarathi holds a PhD in molecular genetics (Imperial College London), and a postgraduate certificate in osteo-archaeology (University of Reading). She has worked in scientific research (Imperial College London, University College London), policy and communication (House of Commons, British Council). She is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Global Health, University College London, where she studies the impacts of modern urban environments on health, and spends her spare time learning from human remains at archaeological excavations (including the ‘dark’ side of Vesuvius, an ancient children’s cemetery in Greece, and a necropolis in Rome).

Florian Mussgnug

Florian Mussgnug is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian at University College London. His work focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century literature, cultural theory, and co-creative practice. He is interested in narratives of global catastrophe and existential risk and in emergent forms of planetary thinking in world literature studies. Florian’s current research on elegy and the climate crisis wants to articulate the value of non-human and human life against a background of uncertain survival. It probes Anthropocene discourse from the perspective of climate justice and posthumanism. Florian has been Visiting Professor at the Universities of Siena, Cagliari, and Roma Tre, Visiting Lecturer at Oxford University, and Research Fellow at the British School at Rome. He directs the UCL Cities Partnerships Programme in Rome, and has been co-investigator for the five-year, AHRC-funded research project “Interdisciplinary Italy 1900-2020: Interart/Intermedia”.

Sandra Moog

Sandra Moog is a Lecturer in Management and Sustainability at the University of Essex. She is interested in citizen mobilization as a response to global environmental crisis. Her research focuses on how our ideas about the natural world and human solidarity have shaped recent responses to tropical deforestation and climate change, and the role of transnational civil society in the politics of sustainable development.

Simona Corso

Simona Corso is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Rome “Roma Tre”. Her research interests cover the tradition of the European novel and the novel in English, from the Eighteenth Century to the present. Her publications include Narrating the Passions. New Perspectives from Modern and Contemporary Literature (with B. Guilding, 2017); Postcolonial Shakespeare (with M. d’Amico, 2009); Automi, termometri, fucili. L’immaginario della macchina nel romanzo inglese e francese del Settecento (2004). Recently she has been working on the way literature articulates the experience of mourning and on the solace it can offer. Her co-edited book (with F. Mussgnug and J. Rushworth) Dwelling on grief: narratives of mourning across time and forms, Legenda, is forthcoming. Her novel Capodanno al Tennis Club (2002) was awarded the Premio Mondello Opera Prima in 2003.