
Dying in the Margins
This 4 year research project (2019-2023), supported by Marie Curie and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, part of UKRI, aimed to examine people’s experiences of home dying in a context of financial hardship and deprivation in the UK.
There is consistent evidence that most people would prefer to die at home and that this is seen as a cultural marker of a 'good death'. Whilst there has been recent success in some countries, including the UK, in reducing hospital deaths and increasing deaths at home, these gains have not benefited everyone.
Notably, people from more socio-economically deprived areas in the UK have been shown to be less likely to die at home, and more likely to die in hospital, when compared to people from less socio-economically deprived areas.
Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, when home dying increased dramatically in the UK, there was still a significant disparity between people living in more and less deprived areas.
The Dying in the Margins study is the first study of its kind in the UK to use visual methods to explore experiences of home dying for people struggling to make ends meet.
People with lived experience of financial hardship and serious advanced illness were supported to take images that tell their story of dying at home in Scotland. In addition, award-winning Scottish photographer Margaret Mitchell was commissioned to create a body of work reflecting on participants stories and emotions.
The project generated imagery of end-of-life experience seldom seen or considered by society at large. A series of exhibitions held in 2023 were designed to inform the public conversation around improving the end-of-life care for those experiencing poverty and structural disadvantage. Exhibition viewers were asked the question:
What could be designed or distributed differently to ease people's distress in the final months of their lives?
Our Aim
Our Objectives
Our Methods
Digital Stories
The Cost of Dying Exhibition
Exhibition Images
Money Matters at the End of Life Resource
Policy, Reports and Impact
@Dying_Margins Twitter
Tweets by Dying_MarginsProject Outputs
- Quinn, S. & Richards, N. (2024). The Cost of Dying Exhibition: public, professional and political reactions to a visual exhibition depicting experiences of poverty at the end of life. Medical Humanities.
- Richards, N., Quinn, S., Carduff, E. & Gott, M. (2024). Dying in the margins: Experiences of dying at home for people living with financial hardship and deprivation. Social Science & Medicine - Qualitative Research in Health.
- Quinn, S., Ferguson, L., Read, D. & Richards, N. (2024). “The great escape”: how an incident of elopement gave rise to trauma informed palliative care for a patient experiencing multiple disadvantage. BMC Palliative Care.
- Stirrups, R., 2024. Dignity and inequality at the end of life. The Lancet Oncology.
- Richards, N. , Quinn, S. , Gott, M., Carduff, E., Mitchell, M. and Dooley, O. (2023) Dying in the Margins: The Cost of Dying Exhibition Guide. (doi: 10.36399/gla.pubs.331617)
- Richards, N. and Quinn, S. (2023) Money Matters at the End of Life: Having Open Conversations About Financial Hardship at the End of Life. University of Glasgow. (doi: 10.36399/gla.pubs.331620
- Quinn, S., Richards, N. & Gott, M. (March 2023) Dying at home for people experiencing financial hardship and deprivation: How health and social care professionals recognise and reflect on patients’ circumstances. Palliative Care and Social Practice.
- Richards, N., Quinn. S., Mitchell, M., Carduff, E. & Gott, M. (January 2022) The viability and appropriateness of using visual methods in end of life research to foreground the experiences of people affected by financial hardship and deprivation. Pallitative Medicine.
- Richards, N., (2022). The equity turn in palliative and end of life care research: Lessons from the poverty literature. Sociology Compass
- Rowley, J., Richards, N., Carduff, E. & Gott, M. (September 2021) The impact of poverty and deprivation at the end of life: a critical review. Palliative Care and Social Practice.
- Richards, N. and Rowley, J. (January 2021) Can Dying at Home During Covid-19 Still Be an Indicator of ‘Quality Of Death’?, Policy Scotland
- Richards, N. and Rowley, J. (May 2020) Structural inequalities and dying at home during COVID-19, Policy Scotland
- Richards, N. (May 2020) Is Covid-19 exacerbating inequities in end of life experience? The Herald
Our Team
Dr Naomi Richards
Principal Investigator (University of Glasgow)
Lecturer (School of Interdisciplinary Studies)
Contact: Naomi.Richards@glasgow.ac.uk / 01387 702063
Dr Naomi Richards is Lecturer in End of Life Studies at the University of Glasgow. Prior to joining Glasgow in 2015, she held positions at the University of the West of Scotland and the University of Sheffield. Naomi is a social anthropologist specialising in death and dying, ageing and old age, and visual and ethnographic methods. Over the last decade she has been funded by the ESRC to undertake empirical and theoretical investigations into the UK right-to-die debate and the phenomenon of old age rational suicide. She is also involved in two Wellcome Trust funded case studies. The first examines the relationship between palliative care and assisted dying in three jurisdictions where the practice is lawful. The second examines the global transfer and translation of the Death Café phenomenon.
Dr. Sam Quinn
Reseach Associate (University of Glasgow)
Contact: Sam.Quinn@glasgow.ac.uk
Dr Sam Quinn joined the End of Life Studies group in July 2021. He previously held the position of Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, School of Health in Social Science. Sam completed his Doctoral research on the end of life experiences of people with Down syndrome and Dementia in December 2019. This ethnographic work explored the experiences of people living and working in a group home for people with learning disabilities and dementia. Sam has worked on a range of qualitative research projects encompassing quality improvement in the third sector, frontline health staff experiences of working during COVID-19, and a project to facilitate discussions about risk with forensic inpatients with a learning disability.
Dr Emma Carduff
Research Lead (Marie Curie Hospice, Glasgow)
Dr Emma Carduff is the Research Lead at Marie Curie Hospice, Glasgow. She trained as a nurse at the University of Glasgow and completed a Master’s degree in Public Health Research, then a PhD in research methods for palliative care research from the University of Edinburgh. Dr Carduff is responsible for facilitating, managing and leading research activity at the hospice and collaborates with academic colleagues nationally and internationally. Her particular research interest is the health and wellbeing of unpaid carers of people with terminal illness and she is Advocate Member for the International Palliative Care Family Carer Research Collaboration (IPCFRC) for Scotland. Dr Carduff is also passionate about ensuring equality in end of life experience for those in marginalised groups, including those living with socio-economic deprivation, homelessness and prisoners. In addition, Dr Carduff has experience of working collaboratively with patient and public involvement groups within organisations and those established for specific projects.
Professor Merryn Gott
Associate Head - Research (Te Arai Palliative Care and End of Life Research Group)
Merryn directs the Te Arai Palliative Care and End of Life Research Group based at the University of Auckland. The group conducts multi-disciplinary bicultural research using creative social research methods to inform practice, policy, and teaching in palliative and end of life care both nationally and internationally. Merryn has been conducting research with older people for over 20 years and has a particular interest in developing models of palliative and end of life care to meet the needs of ageing populations. Her research programme has been supported by substantial grants from the HRC, UK Department of Health, Research Councils and Health Charities.