DR CIARA HENDERSON

Biography

Dr Ciara Henderson completed her PhD in Health Sciences in 2023, at Trinity College Dublin (TCD).  Ciara’s doctoral research is in the interdisciplinary field of Death Studies, and examines family experiences of perinatal death (miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death).  Ciara's thesis was a qualitative analysis of the significance of funerary ritual for bereaved families through the twentieth century.  As such, this programme of research traces the evolution of death and burial for both adults and babies, in urban, rural and institutional environments from the nineteenth through to the twentieth century.  

For over ten years Ciara has been studying burial practices relating specifically to the burials of babies and children.  Focusing more closely on cillín burial practices during her doctorate, Ciara investigated this practice from a sociocultural, as well as socioreligious, and archaeological perspective.  Utilising a range of sources and analytic techniques, Ciara examined the changing use of cemeteries and folk burial grounds (cillíní) and how the formalisation of birth and death from the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, influenced death customs, funerals, clinical practice and social and emotional responses to grief.  

A recipient of a 1252 scholarship from the School of Nursing & Midwifery, TCD, for the duration of her doctoral studies Ciara was based in the Trinity Centre for Maternity Care Research, and affiliated with the Trinity Centre for Practice and Healthcare Innovation (TCPHI) research group.  Ciara holds honours degrees in Journalism (BA), Marketing (MSc) and Sociology (MSc), is a reviewer for Mortality Journal, and recently published a chapter on perinatal death in Birth and the Irish: a Miscellany (2021).