Dr Stacey Pitsillides

Associate Professor

Department: Northumbria School of Design, Arts and Creative Industries

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

My research considers how technology and design shift our understanding of death and bereavement. I have curated various events for public engagement and worked with the Hospice of St Francis, in collaboration with bereaved makers using co-design methods to artistically explore their loved one's physical and digital heritage. I have also been an advocate for Future Death in a range of high profile festivals such as Death: The Southbank Centre's Festival for the Living (2012), The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival and Internet Week Europe (2013), The Southbank Centre's Beyond Belief Festival and the Edinburgh International Science Festival (2017).

My research interests include:

Social Design, designing for sensitive situations in a practice-based participatory way
Understanding how technology is reframing our notions of death & bereavement
Re-evaluating evolving ethical practices within digital contexts
Data: questioning the relationship between value, context and curation
Crafting as a design process, when applied to digital content
Practice research, curation as a mode of knowledge production

Key Publications

Immortality and transhumanist rituals in science fiction, Pentaris, P., Pitsillides, S. 1 Nov 2023, Death Rituals in Contemporary Europe, Brill
The death positive library, Pitsillides, S., Nally, C., Luby, A., Brooks, R., Hill, F., Ghee, J., Ingham, K., Robinson, J. 26 Jul 2023, The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Heritage, and Death, London, Taylor & Francis
Donate Yourself: an AR trail exploring the future of organ, tissue and body data donation, Pitsillides, S., Vindiš , T., Boddington, G. 1 Jun 2022, In: Virtual Creativity
Physically distant but socially connected: streaming funerals, memorials and ritual design during COVID-19, Pitsillides, S., Wallace, J. 6 Aug 2021, Death, Grief and Loss in the Context of COVID-19, Abingdon, Oxon, Taylor & Francis
Social Representations of Death and the Death System, Sofka, C., Pitsillides, S. 9 Dec 2021, The Handbook of Thanatology, Louisville, Association for Death Education and Counseling The Thanatology Association
Digital legacy: Designing with things, Pitsillides, S. 9 Aug 2019, In: Death Studies
Networked Emotions: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Sharing Loss Online, Giaxoglou, K., Döveling, K., Pitsillides, S. 2017, In: Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media
Death and Memory in the Twenty-First Century, Pitsillides, S. 1 Jan 2016, Memory in the Twenty-First Century, Palgrave Macmillan
Digital death: What role does digital information play in the way we are (Re)membered?, Pitsillides, S., Waller, M., Fairfax, D. Jul 2012, Digital Identity and Social Media, IGI Global

PGR Supervision

Julie Parsons Making Absence Matter From What The Dead Leave Behind: How Can Everyday Objects Evolve As Working Tool-beings? Start Date: 18/01/2021
Roxanne Bottomley Doing it themselves: Using Communication Design to make space for the experience of marginalised genders in grassroots football Start Date: 18/01/2021