Welcome
The Suicide Cultures site contains news and information about the Suicide Cultures: Reimagining Suicide Research project, funded by a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award.
You'll also find news about related projects on suicide and self-harm, such as:
- Discovering Liveability: Co-producing Alternatives to Suicide Prevention (2024-2031), funded by a Wellcome Discovery Award.
- Suicide in/as Politics (2020-2024), funded by a Leverhulme Trust Project Grant, led by Amy Chandler and Ana Jordan, University of Lincoln, with Research Associates Hazel Marzetti (Edinburgh) and Alex Oaten (Lincoln).
The Suicide Cultures blog features posts about the project, written by members of the research team & associates.
Recent posts include:
What, suicide runs in families? - by Kelly Stewart
‘Unforeseeable’ and ‘inevitable’: Constructions of prison suicide in Scotland’s Fatal Accidents and Sudden Deaths Inquiries - by Rebecca Helman
Insights from the field: Learning from our qualitative research on suicide in Scotland - by Joe Anderson
Reflections on the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) Conference 2023 - by Sarah Huque
Socially compassionate responses to suicide: A contribution to the Time, Space, Compassion approach - by Rebecca Helman
Working through the ethics of 'Suicide Cultures': Part I 'in good faith' - by Sarah Huque
Staying Alive: risk, resistance and responses to LGBT+ suicide, by Hazel Marzetti
What does it mean to investigate suicide cultures? by Joe Anderson
Suicide Cultures: Reimagining Research is a 5 year, qualitative study, using multiple methods. The research aims to better understand suicide in Scotland, focusing on social and cultural factors.
The project team have been working since 2021 across diverse regions and communities in Scotland, in order to develop a detailed and nuanced picture of how suicide affects and is understood in different places, by different people.
Suicide Cultures Recent and Upcoming Presentations
On the 26th-29th August 2025 at The RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2025 (University of Birmingham and online), Sarah Huque will be presenting: 'Guilt, anger, grief, and peace: Mapping suicide bereavement stories to explore the conditions that inform suicide and its aftermath', in an organised session called: 'Emotional Geographies of Loss and Vulnerability: The Role of Emotions for the Transformation of Local Worlds'.
Suicide Cultures Project team organised Symposium on the 6th- 7th of May 2025, Suicide Cultures and the Sociology of Suicide Symposium in Edinburgh. Sarah Huque presented 'From within and going without: A critical phenomenological exploration of experiences of institutions & suicide'.
Sarah Huque presented at 'Learning from the materiality of suicide stories: Closed windows and government letters' at the Suicide Research Symposium (online), 23-25th April 2025.
Sarah Huque presented at 'Learning Across Death Investigations: A SAFESOC dissemination and network building event' in September 2024 in Manchester.
The Suicide Cultures Podcast features researchers Joe Anderson, Rebecca Helman and Sarah Huque in conversation with each other, or with special guests, discussing suicide-related topics from a range of perspectives.
The podcast is designed to take our conversations about suicide to a broader audience, and to involve people with different types of experience and expertise in these.
You can listen to the podcast via Spotify, and see notes and summaries of all our shows so far over on the blog.
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