Senior Lecturer in Social Science, University of Glasgow
Dr Naomi Richards is Director of the End of Life Studies Group at the University of Glasgow. She is a Senior Lecturer in Social Science and is a social anthropologist by training. She specialises in dying and death, ageing and old age, and visual and ethnographic methods.
Dr Richards has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles in a variety of social science and clinical journals, in addition to 6 book chapters. Over the last decade she has been funded to undertake empirical and theoretical investigations into: the UK’s assisted dying debate; the phenomenon of old age rational suicide; the relationship between assisted dying and palliative care internationally; and the international Death Café movement.
Between 2019-23, she led the Dying in the Margins study - a qualitative visual methods study which aimed to uncover the reasons for unequal access to home dying for people experiencing poverty and deprivation. This lead to the Cost of Dying exhibition. She continues to work on experiences of financial hardship at end life, specifically in rural Scotland, through the Marie Curie-funded Unreached study. She also co-leads the DeathWrites research network, supporting creative writers based in Scotland to write and publish powerful, accessible work on the subject of dying, death, grief and loss.
Dr Richards teaches multiple courses on the University of Glasgow’s End of Life Studies Programme (PGCert/PGDip/MSc) and pioneered a partnership with the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh to produce a unique microcredential on End of Life Challenges and Palliative Care, introducing social science theories and ways of thinking to health and social care professionals.