Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Wednesday 12 October
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
About
What is a ‘good death’?
Incorporating a range of personal and professional perspectives, this panel discussion unpacks the many ways we understand and experience death throughout our lives – from how we carefully communicate the inevitability of death to children, to the stories we tell ourselves and our loved ones about it as adults.
Hear from renowned writer Chloe Hooper, death doula and independent funeral director Kimba Griffith, Wamba Wamba, Ngurai-Illum Wurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung and Wotjobaluk woman and owner of Murrenda Memorial Service Stacey Hamilton, anthropologist Dr Hannah Gould and host Paul Barclay, as they discuss the ways different families, cultures and communities experience dying, death and grieving, the extent to which technological advancements have impacted modern-day death care, and what elements need to come together for a ‘good death’ to occur.
Illustration: Megan Herbert
The bookseller for this event is Neighbourhood Books.
This event will be recorded and broadcast as part of ABC’s Big Ideas.
Presented in partnership with the Contemplative Studies Centre.
Featuring
Hannah Gould
Dr Hannah Gould is a cultural anthropologist working in the areas of death, religion (Buddhism), and material culture, with a regional focus on East-Asia and Australia. Her research examines the processes of disposal and divestment, both in regard to the human dead and material objects. In sum, she studies 'the stuff of death and the death of stuff'.
Dr Gould has degrees from Melbourne and Oxford Universities, and completed her doctoral research into the transformation of contemporary Japanese death ritual. Dr Gould currently serves as the President of The Australian Death Studies Society and holds the Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellowship for the project "Mobile Mortality: Transnational Futures of Deathcare in the Asia Pacific".
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Kimba Griffith
Wholistic Funeral director, ceremonialist, death doula, jazz singer and death disruptor, Kimba Griffith walks with those facing life’s most immense transitions.
As well as supporting people who have lost a person, Kimba works with people facing a life limiting illness, and those seeking to access Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD). Her work also extends to rituals to honour the loss of a body part or organ, and ceremonies to mark other moments of loss or transition.
Kimba’s work is informed by both the secular and spiritual paradigms, and she has a particular interest in liminal spaces and places where thresholds must be encountered and reckoned with.
View ProfileStacey Hamilton
Stacey Hamilton is a Proud Wamba Wamba, Ngurai-Illum Wurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung and Wotjobaluk woman. Mother of Seven, Grandmother to 18. Owner/operator of Melbourne's newest funeral service "Murrenda Memorial Services."
(Murrenda in Wamba Wamba language means to be alive.)
This is a family lead funeral services which supports families with either, modern, traditional or anything in between. While also focusing on embracing one's culture, especially being able to provide Aboriginal culturally safe provisions.
Stacey's background work is all community service based. She is proactive in supporting people with hurdles, that need meaningful hands on practical support. Stacey will happily walk with them and support them through the process rather than send them away to figure it out on their own in the name of empowerment.
Stacey is more than just a funeral director.
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Chloe Hooper
Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island (2008) won the Victorian, New South Wales, West Australian and Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, as well as the John Button Prize for Political Writing, and a Ned Kelly Award for crime writing. Her latest book is The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire (2018). She is also the author of two novels, A Child’s Book of True Crime and The Engagement.
Paul Barclay
Paul Barclay is a Walkley Award winning journalist and broadcaster with an appetite for ideas and in-depth analysis and discussion.
Paul has produced countless stories over more than 20 years for an array of programs on virtually all ABC radio networks.
He is currently the presenter of Big Ideas on ABC Radio National.