Dr. Nina Vaswani on young men and grief during in imprisonment, childhood bereavement, masculinities, trauma informed practice, disenfranchised grief and public health responses to grief
The Death Studies PodcastShow Notes
What's the episode about? In this episode, hear Nina Vaswani on young men and grief during in imprisonment, childhood bereavement, masculinities and grief, trauma informed practice, comics for education and research, disenfranchised grief, grieving a death you have caused, and public health responses to grief Who is Nina? Nina is Senior Research Fellow at the Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice, University of Strathclyde. Her key research interests are the experience and impact of loss, bereavement and trauma in young people and how these experiences interface and shape contact with the justicesystem. Of particular interest is the overrepresentation of young men in justice-settings, and how their exposure to loss, bereavement and trauma might shape their developing masculinities identities, behaviours and outcomes. As a result, she is also interested in institutional and organisational responses to trauma, and the realities of trauma-informed approaches in practice. Nina was also the PI on Men Minds, a coproduced research project exploring masculinities and mental health with marginalised young men.
Resources
When People Die
Men Minds comic, whichopens with a story of bereavement in prison
The prevalence study isopen access and is available here. How do I cite the episode in my research and reading lists? To cite this episode, you can use the following citation: Vaswani, N. (2026) Interview on The Death Studies Podcast hosted by Michael-Fox, B. and Visser, R. Published 2 January 2026. Available at: www.thedeathstudiespodcast.com, DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.31224109
More from The Death Studies Podcast
Who is Jane? Jane McCarthy is an English sociologist who has worked for many decades across various disciplines to focuson ‘family’, childhood, and relationality. In the last 25 years,since the death of her husband when their daughter was aged 5, she has built on this earlier work to explore death and its continuing aftermath in the everyday relational lives of the living, alongside ‘family troubles’ more broadly. She has approached these topics in terms of lived experiences, academic approaches, and professional practices and services. She has particularly offered a view of bereavement as a source of change, rather than the narrower view of ‘loss’, including in the lives of children experiencing a significant death in their lives. Her general approach to all these subjects is to set aside what may be considered ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’, ‘harmful’ or ‘beneficial’, and rather to focus on how disruptive change may be experienced in everyday relational lives, with multiple ramifications, and how people themselves make sense of these within the circumstances of their lives. Some of Jane’s work has involved research and collaborations in Senegal and China, but her primary experience is UK based, where she has particularly valued her involvement with the Community Voices network.
What's the episode about? In this episode, hear about an event on Love and Loss: A DayAt Arnos Vale Historic Garden Cemetery, Bristol discussing love, romance, sex, death, culture, prison writing, slow suicide, creative writing, obituaries, epitaphs and more.
Dead Women and Gendered Death in Visual Culture for MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture