Alastair Comery

My PhD is entitled, A Gradual Farewell with Music. I will marry sociological and musicological paradigms to explore the embodied experience of music in people’s experiences of loss. To capture the dynamic role of music in bereaved people’s ongoing lives, I will focus on their interactions with music both during the dying process of their loved one and post loss. Drawing on the theory of ‘musicking’, I will explore how individuals both actively and passively draw on music to (re)shape themselves in facing loss and how a ‘music literacy’ may help better support individual’s experiences of bereavement. I will employ a qualitative approach, conducting interviews to capture unique perspectives little represented in the current literature.