Sara Kaufman and Leanne Nieforth talk about their recently published research in Omega– Journal of Death and Dying, the challenges and rewards of conducting interdisciplinary research in this area and suggestions for both life and death scholars.
Sara: My research interest in death and dying and non-human animals began when I worked at a veterinary school several years ago. I think partially because I was immersed in the culture of veterinary school, I was thinking about how our relationships with non-human animals, like our pets, affect our interpersonal communication. My partner and I experienced an intense grieving period after the death of our dog, and I started thinking about how this kind of death affects people's relationships. This idea eventually became the subject of my dissertation, examining companion animal loss within the family system. I never thought I’d be conducting research in the realm of life and death. Leanne, how did you become interested in this topic?
Leanne: In addition to my academic role focused on researching the human-animal bond, I am a trained and certified practitioner for equine-assisted services. Through the years, I have had the privilege to work with some amazing humans and horses. I have seen firsthand the impacts the horses have within equine-assisted programs and have experienced (and supported other horses and humans through) the death of a horse in this context. With these lived experiences, I noted that the topic was missing from the literature and was motivated to fill the gap. People (including myself) really struggled with the loss of their horse partners, and I felt that digging into the topic in an academic context could be both a support for them and a way to honor the horses. I was so grateful for our connection and your willingness to partner together with this new idea!
Sara: We talked about collaborating on research together for several years before we started this study. You are with the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University, and I am in the Department of Communication Studies at Manchester University. We both have an academic background in communication, which I think has been a strength. What has your experience been like doing interdisciplinary research? And how would you suggest other scholars begin?
Leanne: I very much enjoy the interdisciplinary nature of human-animal interaction research. When people ask me what my degrees are in, they always give me a funny look when I share that I have a BS in Animal Science (where I focused heavily on bench work and bioscience), an MS in Communication (where I broadened my lens to focus on theory and social science) and then combined the skills into my PhD in Human-Animal Interaction. Having an interdisciplinary background has been so valuable. I love that I can have conversations with a variety of researchers across disciplines and incorporate
multiple methodologies into my own work. Combining different mindsets and
perspectives creates space to really dig into phenomena, ultimately offering a more complete picture of what is happening.
I would encourage scholars to reach out to others who are studying similar topics but from a completely different perspective. Scholars love to talk about their work and in conversation, you can learn more and see how your scholarship could potentially align. Of course, before these conversations, reading up on the other person’s work is critical.
Sara, what has your experience been like? Any advice for scholars on starting with interdisciplinary research?
Sara: In my experience, finding connections between your work and others is a good place to start, even if you don’t have perfectly aligned interests. You never know where these conversations may lead in the future. And of course, joining professional networks like End-of-Life & Death Scholars. The more I get to know my colleagues working in this area, the more I am impressed by the variety of topics and approaches they employ to examine an often understudied yet inevitable facet of the human experience.
Assisted Services Program, explored the experiences of equine service practitioners and identified the socioemotional processes that occur upon the death of a horse within an equine-assisted services program. We found that the way in which our survey respondents processed the death of an equine was situated within Worden’s Four Tasks of Mourning. This grief model is comprised of accepting the reality of the loss, processing the pain of grief, adjusting to an environment in which the deceased is missing, and emotionally relocating the deceased to move on with life (Worden, 2018). This grief model had been previously applied in the context of human death, but not yet expanded to companion animal death. The responses to our survey fell into two themes, processing the death of an equine and practical implications for horse-human
interaction practitioners.
Practically speaking, we found that it was important for equine service providers to prepare for the logistics of a death, including euthanasia and setting a communication plan well in advance of needing one.
Leanne: Applying a model that had been previously only considered in the context of human death to the context of horse death brought validation to practitioner experiences. Many times, the grief of an animal is disenfranchised, and people often feel isolated or guilty for what their grief looks like or feels like. Applying a human loss- focused grief model in this study suggested that similar processes are occurring with animal grief, affirming many experiences.
In sharing this work, many practitioners have been grateful to have a framework for understanding their own grief processes. One question that I often get is how do you handle doing such sad work? As a researcher, I am passionate about ensuring that my work is directly applicable and useful to people’s daily lives which helps me to remember my why. Sara, what about you?
Sara: I’ve found that personally, conducting this kind of research can sometimes be emotionally taxing. I try to enter into the research process reminding myself there may be times of heightened emotion and vulnerability, which helps me prepare for those moments. I agree with your sentiment of remembering your “why,” because keeping in the forefront why I study these topics can help ground me. I think it is also important for new scholars who work with vulnerable populations and sensitive subjects like grief and
loss to have their own support systems in place if things get difficult.
Ultimately, I appreciate the opportunity to do this kind of work and am especially grateful for the time that the people involved in our research have given us. I hope that it helps others in the future and other researchers studying in the areas of end-of-life and death.
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AUTHORS
Sara Kaufman, PhD is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Manchester University.
Leanne Nieforth, MS, PhD is an assistant professor of Human-Animal Interaction at Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine at the Center for the Human Animal Bond.
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Find the Practitioner Experiences of the Death of an Equine in an Equine-Assisted Services Program publication here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00302228241249200
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