Free Thinking: Approaches to Death

Pauline Harding was invited to contribute to an episode of the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking programme looking at approaches to death including Viking burials, preserving archaeology in Uganda, the morgues of Paris and New York and the medieval attitude to dying.

Pauline spoke about her current AHRC-funded PhD research on spirits and approaches to cultural heritage in Uganda. She is exploring Ugandan heritage values in terms of historically rooted practices that are living, thriving and continually evolving. 

She was recently shortlisted for the BBC-AHRC New Generation Thinkers scheme for 2024 but missed out on a place in the final 10. Well done Pauline!

Listen again

• BBC Radio 4: Free Thinking, Approaches to Death (originally broadcast on BBC R3, 26/03/24)

Image: A shrine to the death spirit Walumbe, at Ttanda Archaeological Archives in Uganda. Here a landscape of precolonial mineshafts locally associated with foundation myth about death’s arrival on earth has been transformed into a place for spirit worshippers to pray away disease, death and misfortune. Traditional cloths made from hammered tree bark cover a mineshaft where Walumbe is said to live, surrounded by offerings of spears, Christian crosses and other items associated with death. These offerings have been left here by people who have suffered Walumbe’s wrath, or who have received instructions from him in their dreams.