Thackray Museum of Medicine Insights Lecture Series: Professor Laura King

- Date: Saturday 8 November 2025, 10:30 – 12:00
- Location: Off-campus
- Type: Seminars and lectures
- Cost: £14.95. <a href="https://thackraymuseum.co.uk/event/thackray-insights-the-living-dead/">Book online</a>.
Join Professor Laura King as she presents 'The Living Dead' together with Dr Aoife Sutton-Butler.
This lecture is part of the Thackray Museum of Medicine Insights Lecture Series 2025/26.
The cemetery worker exists in a transitional space — overseeing the dead to their final resting place. It’s a life that confronts the reality of death in unexpected ways. Join Dr Aoife Sutton-Butler as she digs up the dirt on what it’s really like to work the graveyard shift and how we can preserve our relationship with the departed. Dr Aoife Sutton–Butler is a cemetery registrar with a PHD from University of Bradford’s chool of Archaeological and Forensic Sciences. She is the author of the Lady Graveyard Keeper Substack and was awarded the Royal Institution Freer Prize Fellowship in the history of science and heritage conservation.
Death is inevitable and yet for human beings there remains something deeply unsettling about that truth. Can we live forever? Through personal experiences and intimate stories, Professor Laura King uncovers how the dead stay alive through their loved ones and remain an active part of family life over many generations. Professor Laura King is a historian of families and emotional relationships in modern Britain. She is Professor of Collaborative History at the University of Leeds, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society a member of the Women’s History Network.
Location
This lecture will take place at the Thackray Museum of Medicine, Beckett Street, Leeds, LS9 7LN.
Booking details
This is a ticketed event. Book your ticket and find out more about the series on the museum’s website.