Dr Stacey Pitsillides

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

• Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
• Decolonising Death Studies, Pentaris, P., Pitsillides, S., Ghorbani, H. 22 Jan 2026
• Druze Reincarnation: Migration, Political Agency and Grief, Pitsillides, S., Tahlouk, R., Cerci, S. 22 Jan 2026, Decolonising Death Studies, London, UK, Taylor & Francis
• Postmortem life: thanobots, digital twins and feminist immortality, Pitsillides, S., Sampson, E. 30 Jul 2025, In: AI and Society
• Dying.exhibit 2024, Sampson, E., Pitsillides, S. 19 Jan 2024
• Fallacious Memory: Bath Arts Fringe, Sampson, E., Pitsillides, S. 24 May 2024
• 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

• Angharad Pitty Influences of AI in Grieving Start Date: 08/12/2025
• 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 End Date: 17/10/2025
• 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
• 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 End Date: 17/10/2025
• 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

• PhD February 24 2017
• Fellow (FHEA) Higher Education Academy (HEA) 2019

• Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
• Research Website