Dr Lucy Selman
Dr Lucy Selman is the founding director of Good Grief Festival.
The vision for the festival arose out of her professional interests and personal experience: her father died of cancer when she was 15, and she went on to become a researcher specialising in palliative and end of life care. Her second daughter was stillborn in 2018. Good Grief was inspired by this loss, and her belief that through sharing experiences and knowledge we can find solace and support.
Lucy is an Associate Professor in the School of Population Health Sciences, University of Bristol. Her research and publications over the past 16 years have mainly focused on psychosocial and spiritual aspects of the illness experience; decision-making and communication; family care-giving and bereavement; and widening access to services.
Together with Dr Emily Harrop at Cardiff University, Lucy is currently leading a national study of bereavement during the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact on bereavement services. To learn more about the study, visit the Covid Bereavement website. Some of Lucy’s research papers on bereavement during the pandemic are listed below. All are open access.
- Harrop E. at al. Support needs and barriers to accessing support: Baseline results of a mixed methods national survey of people bereaved during the COVID-19 pandemic. Palliative Medicine [in press]
- Selman LE. Covid grief has cracked us open: how clinicians respond could reshape attitudes to bereavement – an essay. British Medical Journal, 10 August 2021
- Selman LE, Sowden R, Borgstrom E. ‘Saying goodbye’ during the COVID-19 pandemic: a document analysis of online newspapers with implications for end of life care. Palliative Medicine, 21 May 2021;35:1277-87.
- Sowden R., Borgstrom E., Selman LE. ‘It’s like being in a war with an invisible enemy’: A document analysis of bereavement due to COVID-19 in UK newspapers. PLOS One, 4 March 2021
- Burrell A. and Selman LE. How do funeral practices impact bereaved relatives’ mental health, grief and bereavement? A mixed methods review with implications for COVID-19. Omega, 8 July 2020
Image (c) Artur Tixiliski
