It isn’t about owning a skeleton. It is about access. It is about trust. It is about our shared humanity. It’s about communion with our mortality. I made a decision when I was 13 that means some people think I should not be allowed to handle a skeleton now. At that young age, a bunny-hugging, anti-vivisection, vegetarian, I refused to study GCSE biology because of the compulsory murder and dissection of healthy mice. That decision closed off entire avenues of study to me, whi

Much belated post after cold and snot induced vertigo. A second time with bird skeletons in the Zoology Museum, so many more bird skeletons in the portfolio - including a flightless cormorant with a bandaged head, and an ovenbird which is decidedly legless (or bodiless) - is that oven ready? Also the fun challenge of a Cassowary and a Rhea brought in for photos - needing a huge background sheet, and standing far far away to get the bird in the photo! But, most excitingly, I h

I've spent a lot of time in the Zoology museum this month, both front of house (helping people find things in the museum, including the only baculum) and behind the scenes. (Yes, they have let me get my hands on the skeletons!) Specifically, the bird skeletons that are off to go for teaching resources needed to be unpacked, photographed and given a thorough condition report. (If you haven't done museum condition reporting, but have hired a car from a very dodgy company, you'l

This month I have been to a number of Death Awareness events: From Selfies to Runes, how do we want to be remembered? Face to Face with Medieval Cambridge (which had some wonderful re-enactors, one in full leprosy makeup!) and Living Well, Dying Well, (the latter organised through the wonderful - though I may be biased as I helped set it up) Dying for Life! All these events were at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas, 2018. Each of these events many new thoughts, conversations, e

So this week, month, and some of this year, and years before, I have been contemplating art. In a classic photographic text, I came across a statement of three questions to think about when contemplating a photograph, which can apply to any piece of art: What has the artist done? What was the artist trying to achieve? Was it worth it? The first is a straightforward description of what you see. The second, an analysis of what you think it means. The third...? That third point

Summary of the University of Southampton "Skeletons, Stories and Social Bodies" conference 2018: Met some old friends, made some new friends. I bought some fun things. I even sold some things! I learnt a lot. And I won something, with prizes of book and booze! (And, bizarrely, as an echo of my presentation at Death and the Maiden, having handed a packet of Starburst to my first customer at the stall, he thought the natural thing to do with it was to offer it as a prize to the

Quick blog to say sorry for being quiet - I've been manning various events in the Cambridge Science Festival, and now am packing pictures and skeletons for Skeletons, Stories and Social Bodies conference in Southampton University this week. It will be the preview of mounted prints of the Rothwell Ossuary, as well as a first chance to buy new framed prints and A0 posters! Hope to see you there - please come along and say hello! #skeleton #conference #SkeletonBob

Looking for the perfect Christmas present for that friend who still wishes it was Halloween? Buy my book! I know I've mentioned this before, but this time, you can buy directly for me, which means I can sign a dedication to you or your friend directly. And means I can sell it for the £25 in total (none of that expensive blurb postage and packing costs). And who knows what other freebies I might throw in to say thank you! And you can help me buy things for Christmas for peopl

So last month I had a chance to meet a new skull. And was invited by a pro to "say what I see". Let's see what I can tell you about a person just on looking at their skull. Please enjoy my amateurish tour of the bits and bobs that I noticed. The first thing I noted was the obvious damage to the frontal bone - probably post mortem and post preparation as a display skull. Also obvious from this angle are the fairly prominent suture lines which indicate this was probably an adul

After the wonderful, lovely, joyful, belly laughs of the Death and the Maiden conference, I have been resting. I did present the full Marathon scale of Progressive Acceptability, and did throw sweets to the audience to make the point stick. I also ran out of time; in my rehearsals I made allowances for throwing, but not the catching of sweets, or the distraction of seeing someone spot an unclaimed starburst on the floor, and slowly slinking out of their chair to get it unob

Sorry I've been so quiet recently. I had a long rest after Dying for Life, then a push to write up the final bits for my photography degree and Arts Council grant. And now I'm converting some of my dissertation (and yes, that's a link to my actual dissertation - if you fancy a read) into a 20 minute whirlwind tour of death in visual art in the past 1000 years for the Death and the Maiden conference. I am currently wrangling with quite how much I should venture my personal the

A very quick post (as I'm still exhausted) to say how brilliant the Dying for Life Event was. Over 150 people came to chat about dying, meet the skeletons and look at the pretty pictures. Some even bought the book (a few spares are still available, and cheaper from me than Blurb - contact me!). It was so lovely to talk to people with such different backgrounds and such different views, all learning from each other new ways to talk about and handle death. I had long discussion

Through some fantastic luck, a chance meeting a few years ago sparked my interest in skeletons and came together as a superb visit to an osteoarchaeology collection. And this happened on my birthday. How brilliant is that? Victorian casts of female (top) and male (bottom) skulls, showing strong sexual identifying features This osteoarchaeology collection (see portfolio here) is usually kept behind locked doors and used for teaching the students at Cambridge University. Not on

18,050* people were at the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies last month. *This figure is an estimate. But I guess that 50 alive people came to visit some of the 18,000 human remains of the Duckworth Collection, kept at the LCHES. Of course, because of the peculiar sensitivities of the British, most of the human remains weren’t (and aren’t ever) on display. But there were an impressive mass of human and hominid skull casts in the main reception room; the best I

Visiting one of only two charnel chapels (or ossuaries) left in the country left a bitter taste in my mouth. Though it was possibly more sour than bitter. Or tangy. Very musty certainly. Once tasted, never forgotten. Unfortunately, though the internet mentions that admission includes tea and biscuits (how very British), on our visit they didn't seem to be offered to take the taste away. See portfolio here! So to say that Rothwell Charnel House has an atmosphere would be a s

Channel Four made the first televised autopsy with Dr Gunther von Hagen's in 2002. There was much criticism by people who I can only guess pretended to be shocked that a programme called "The Autopsy" and had explicit warnings on at the beginning and throughout, then contained images of a real dead body. (I actually believe that most of them didn't even watch it, but disagreed with the principle of the general public being able to see a dead body. They may even disagree with

Today, not many words are needed, as I just wanted to share my first attempts to bring out the beauty of the variety of skull shapes. It's something that is difficult to appreciate as most museums show only one skull or skeleton to stand in for the all. But I have had a rare chance to put four skulls side by side so that you can directly compare. (One notable exception is the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.) The skulls shown represent different races, different sexes, differen

Death in Cambridge. It doesn't sound as glamorous as Death in Venice, but we have arty buildings and the punting. Most of all, we have a fantastic base of people enthusiastic about sharing art, information, ideas and conversation about dying and death which may well just have an impact on the way we choose to live our lives. This sprang out of a surprisingly fun meeting at Death Cafe in Cambridge last year. It was the first time I experienced a gathering of people determined

This week I have mostly been thinking about decapitations. It started as a casual conversation with someone who will remain anonymous but who can confirm that she knows the person who knows the whereabouts of Oliver Cromwell's head. For those of you who don't know, having rested peacefully in Westminster Abbey, he was dug up and posthumously executed after the restoration of the English Monarchy. The corpse was exhumed and then hanged, and later his head was placed on a spike

He (I am assuming it is a he) is easy to overlook. Many people wander by and don't even notice him. He is stealth itself, watching the crowds not even notice him as he sits, looking up briefly from his book, in Norwich Castle Museum, in a small linking corridor between the Natural History galleries. It is near-impossible to get a good photo of him (apologies for that). And the photos that are out there on the web, don't say who he is. He has a small key marker saying "2", but