Research


ASCE members work on many projects, research and other discussions. List of all the relevant documents will be kept here for further interaction, rethinking and researching on the subjects related to cemeteries and cultures.

If you are a research institution with your own interesting findings, you are welcome to share them here. Do not hesitate to contact us and let our broad society know about it. If you need any further help, ideas or thoughts, this is most certainly a place where you can find the best partners.

Bibliography on cemeteries

One aim of ASCE is to promote research to support a broader understanding of the importance of our cemeteries, and of modern burial culture across Europe. We therefore invite academics from all social disciplines with an interest in cemeteries to join our virtual network. These academic research pages include a bibliography and biographies of academics that have cemeteries as a core research interest. 

The bibliography is sorted by country and broad subject area, where relevant. Where one or more chapters are relevant from a collected text, individual chapters are not listed separately.

It is currently available as downloadable PDF file, but in future we will develop a more extended list with possibilities of search and filtering.

Researchers network

(Contribute to researchers network)


Dr F. Javier Rodríguez Barberán, Historian of Art, is Assistant Professor in the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura (School of Architecture) at the Universidad de Sevilla (University of Seville, Spain).

From the early 90s, his research area has been the cultural and heritage dimension of cemeteries, paying special attention to the development of funerary art and architecture in XIXth and XXth centuries. In 1991 he was the director of the I Encuentro Internacional sobre los Cementerios Contemporaneous. The conference publication, Una Arquitectura para la Muerte – 1st International Encounter on Contemporary Cemeteries: An Architecture for Death, is a key reference for the studies on this subject. Curator of several exhibitions, he has been the author of books and articles such as Cementerios de Andalucía  (Cemeteries in Andalusia, 1993) or Los Cementerios en la Sevilla Contemporánea: Análisis Histórico y Artístico 1800-1950 (Cemeteries in Modern Seville: historical and artistic dimensions 1800-1950, 1996). Dr Rodríguez Barberán is president of the Scientific Committee of the European Cemeteries Route, a Cultural Route of the Council of Europe.


Dr Julie Rugg heads the Cemetery Research Group at the University of York (UK).

Dr Rugg specialises in cemetery history and cemetery policy, in England specifically within the UK, and across Europe generally. Her work has explored the cultural contexts for cemetery development, including patterns of urban development, religious political difference and the public health discourses. Churchyard and Cemetery: Tradition and Modernity in Rural North Yorkshire (2013) explained elements of the legal history of burial in England from 1850 to the present and also charted ways in which the burial landscape changed over time. Dr Rugg’s interest in policy encompasses aspects of cemetery management including measures to protect and conserve burial landscapes.  Dr Rugg sits on the Ministry of Justice Burial and Cremation Advisory Board and the Ethics Committee of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Each year in May she hosts an international cemetery colloquium at the University of York.
Website: http://www.york.ac.uk/chp/crg/