Based on two decades of academic research, my scholarly yet sympathetic talks about funeral customs past, present and future will get your group thinking and talking about how exactly do we deal with this inevitable fact of life.

We're all mortal: and the ways in which we approach, avoid and confront this fact through funeral customs can tell us a lot about human nature. I'm fascinated by how people use ritual so creatively to work though our relationships with the dead, and how funerary rituals change - or don't - throughout history.

Following a PhD on Victorian funeral customs from the University of Leeds in 2009, I'm now an internationally recognised expert on the history and folklore of death, dying and funerals. My most recent non-academic publication is the Shire Library book 'Traditions of Death and Burial' (Bloomsbury, 2019) - it's the history of death, dying and funerals since the Middle Ages that I've always wanted to write. Previously I've appeared on the History Channel discussing Victorian funerals with Johnny Vaughan, and on BBC radio talking about sin-eating and other historic funeral customs.