The symposium was organised by three PhD students from SALC (School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures), based in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester. Our diverse research interests and topics were reflected in the interdisciplinary emphasis of the symposium, in which approached bodies and their untouchability from a range of perspectives and disciplines.
Katherine Crouch is researching the practice of mortuary archaeology in Britain, its role in
contemporary culture and the impact of ‘digging up the dead’ on archaeology
professionals. Her interest in archaeological bodies lies in the dualistic status
of the corpse as both object and person, the symbolic qualities of bodies and
body parts and the ways in which the remains of the dead are used to serve the interests
of the living.
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Scott Midson is researching Donna Haraway's concept of the cyborg with regards to theological anthropologies. His interest in bodies comes from an attempt to understand how technology impacts our bodies both physically and conceptually, which expands to other issues that broadly fall under the title of 'posthumanities', including 'transhumanism', where there are efforts made to digitise (and thus de-corporealise) the body.
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