Living With Death events at Leeds City Museum: Professor Laura King

Join Professor Laura King as she presents 'Living with the dead: The stories families tell' at Leeds City Museum.

Families ‘keep alive’ their dead through visits to graves, the keeping of objects, the displaying of photos – but perhaps the most slippery and the most meaningful is storytelling.

In this talk, Professor Laura King will discuss the wide range of emotions stories can bring about, and how families navigate both the positive tales of success and the secrets and difficult moments in a family’s past. She’ll tell you some stories about her grandmother, Anne, or Nanny King, or even ‘Nanette’, and through this example, we’ll think about how stories are not just interesting because of what they tell us about a family’s past, but how the telling of the tale matters as much as the tale itself. Find out more about the talk on the Leeds Museums and Galleries website.

About the speaker

Professor Laura King is an historian and Professor of Collaborative History at the University of Leeds, who works on tlhe histories of families and everyday life in modern Britain. Her book, Living with the Dead: Histories, Memories and the Stories Families Tell will shortly be published by Oxford University Press.

Location

This talk will take place at Leeds City Museum, Millennium Square, Leeds, LS2 8BH.

Image credit

Anne King, née Wright, photographed in Belfast in the 1930s. Photograph copyright Laura King.

Living with Death: an exhibition exploring death, dying and bereavement

This exhibition runs at Leeds City Museum until 5^th January 2025. Find out more about the exhibition on the Leeds Museums and Galleries website.