Every culture must devise ways of attending to mortal remains. The Cemetery Research Group (CRG) takes an interdisciplinary approach in researching how emotional, religious and social concerns have been framed by economic and political imperatives.

Across the world, traditional practices have been gradually overtaken by the need to operate at scale, as populations move from rural to urban settlements. Dealing with the dead has become the purview of professional managers, planners and technological innovators. 

The highly charged significance of mortal remains means that societal responses to the dead can become points of coercion and conflict, celebrating or supressing identity. 

Scholars from around the globe are engaged in cemetery studies, broadly defined, and there is a substantial and growing bibliography.

Survey

Gina Venneri, PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Salerno (Italy), is conducting an anonymous international survey as part of her doctoral research on the processes of re-signification that have shaped – and continue to shape – historic cemeteries.

Her research focuses particularly on Italian cemeteries of historical, artistic, and landscape value established between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. In recent decades, some of these sites have increasingly been approached not only as burial grounds and places of remembrance, but also as cultural spaces, sites of social interaction, and laboratories for community participation.

The survey aims to explore how historic cemeteries are perceived, visited, experienced, and interpreted today, gathering perspectives from people of different cultural, geographical, and generational backgrounds. It also considers experiences of cemeteries beyond Italy, in order to broaden the comparative scope of the research.

No previous experience of visiting a historic cemetery is required to participate. The questionnaire is anonymous, is in England and Italian, and takes approximately 12–18 minutes to complete, and can be found here. Participation and further circulation of the survey would be greatly appreciated.