Contact & Members

Lucy Selman is Professor of Palliative and End of Life Care at the University of Bristol, where she leads the Palliative and End of Life Care Research Group, and the Founding Director of the Good Grief Festival. Her research over the last 20 years has focused on people’s experiences of serious illness, the end of life and bereavement, and how to improve care and support in these domains. Prof Selman excels at uniting others behind a shared vision and collaborating with non-academic partners and diverse communities to improve experiences and reduce inequities at the end of life and in bereavement.

Lesel Dawson is Associate Professor of Literature and Culture at the University of Bristol and the Co-Director of the Good Grief Festival. Her academic research explores grief, literature and the history of the emotions and she is currently writing a book on creativity and grief. Her work includes co-producing two short films on children, grief and creativity; partnering with charities on an article on mandatory grief education; collaborating on an illustrated booklet on grief and baby loss; writing the screenplay for a fiction film about disenfranchised grief; and working with theatre company Crowded Room on an audio story.

David Kessler is an Honorary Fellow in Grief Research and Engagement at the University of Bristol. He is an internationally recognised grief expert, writer and public speaker, with decades of work supporting bereaved people and his own personal experiences of loss. He is the author of six books, including Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief and On Grief and Grieving (co-written with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross). David’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Business Week, and Life Magazine, and on CNN, Fox, NBC, PBS, and CBS. For more about David, visit his website, grief.com

Anne Baden-Daintree‘s research is concerned with end-of-life care in fiction, photography, poetry and film related to HIV/AIDS, with a focus on domestic space. She also works more broadly on literary and creative responses to grief and bereavement from the medieval to the present day, and has developed and taught undergraduate units on The Art of Grief, and Representing HIV/AIDS.

Jenny Birchall is a Senior Research Associate at Bristol Medical School. She is a qualitative researcher, most recently working on a project about equitable bereavement care for ethnically diverse communities. She is part of the Good Grief Festival and Grief Centre team. 

Andrew Blades is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Bristol. He researches several areas relating to grief, having published on the literature and culture of the AIDS epidemic, and he is currently working on a project about hoarding. 

Rachel Hare has collaborated on a number of creative and academic grief-related projects, including an article and policy paper on grief education; zines to accompany the aerial comedy The Guy in the Luggage Rack; short films on children, grief and creativity; and an illustrated booklet on grief and baby loss. She is part of the Good Grief Festival and Grief Centre team.

Jimmy Hay is a filmmaking researcher and the Head of Subject for Film and Television at Bristol. His work explores cinematic portrayals of grief, and the potential for film to convey the lived experience of grieving.

Dominic Lam is a researcher in transnational English Literature at the University of Bristol. His PhD thesis explores depictions of grief across Hong Kong and Việt Nam in memoir, fiction, poetry and film. He is interested in how the loss of loved ones and places interlock, and the role of queerness in grieving.

Chloe Shaw is a Senior Research Associate at the Bristol Medical School. She is a social scientist, specialising in the method of Conversation Analysis, which she has used to study healthcare communication towards the end of life. She is part of the Grief Centre Team.

Gina Walter is a researcher in early modern English Literature. Her recently completed PhD thesis focusses on death and grief in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, and the ways that characters and audiences confront mortality through different objects. She has worked on the Good Grief Festival and on various qualitative research projects examining the impact of creativity (storytelling, theatre-making, singing) on experiences of grief.