Thackray Insights: The living dead

Taking place across our Autumn/Winter season, Thackray Insights invites you to delve deep into eye­ opening topics and explore the unheard stories of medicine.
The cemetery worker exists in a transitional space — overseeing the dead to their final resting place. It’s a life that confronts the reality of death in unexpected ways. Join Dr Aoife Sutton-Butler as she digs up the dirt on what it’s really like to work the graveyard shift and how we can preserve our relationship with the departed.

Death is inevitable and yet for human beings there remains something deeply unsettling about that truth. Can we live forever? Through personal experiences and intimate stories, Professor Laura King uncovers how the dead stay alive through their loved ones and remain an active part of family life over many generations.

About the Speakers

Dr Aoife Sutton–Butler is a cemetery registrar with a PHD from University of Bradford’s chool of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences. She is the author of the Lady Graveyard Keeper Substack and was awarded the Royal Institution Freer Prize Fellowship in the history of science and heritage conservation.

Professor Laura King is a historian of families and emotional relationships in modern Britain. She is Professor of Collaborative History at the University of Leeds, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society a member of the Women’s History Network.

Interested in attending multiple events in the season? Add three or more Insights events into your basket for a 20% discount on your overall purchase at checkout.

We also offer a select number of free Insights tickets for students studying A-Level or above – email Z3JvdXBzIHwgdGhhY2tyYXltdXNldW0gISBvcmc= to find out more.

You may also like the following events from Thackray Museum of Medicine:

• Next Monday, 15th September, 11:00 am, Heritage Open Day 2025: Architecture of Aid - From Workhouse to Hospital in Leeds
• Next Saturday, 20th September, 11:00 am, Questionable Quackery in Leeds
• This month, 25th September, 07:00 pm, Borrowed Time: Tales From the Transplant Ward in Leeds

Also check out other Arts events in Leeds, Literary Art events in Leeds.