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affinities between a methodological approach that acknowledges personhood is inherent in the process of undertaking research, and the universal nature of death that positions researchers studying it as inevitable ‘insiders’. Extending Brennan and Letherby’s focus on the boundaries between death researchers and what they study, the final paper in the special issue by Meridith Burles, offers a very personal account of a difficult experience particular to doing research with dying people. Writing candidly about the complex emotions she felt on learning about the death of her research participants after the study in which they were involved had ended, Burles discusses an experience that has not been sufficiently examined in the literature. Describing her decision to restart keeping a research journal as a means to manage her feelings about these deaths, Burles shares extracts from her diarised thoughts on a period about which she had not originally intended to be reflecting. She argues that research training and regulatory frameworks (e.g. ethics processes) fail to adequately prepare researchers for the emotional ramifications of possible ongoing engagement with participants once a project has ended. Her article argues that recognition of the need for ongoing support to be made available to researchers is therefore imperative, and especially pertinent for research involving dying people, whose fate researchers may continue to ruminate over long after study-based contact is complete. Mortality Special Issue Vol 22 (2) May 2017 15 While the identification of ethically ‘appropriate’ boundaries for researchers to establish when ‘leaving’ a field of study has received methodological attention (see chapters in Shaffir and Stebbins, 1991), Burles’ takes the reader into less explored territory by describing a myriad of ways in which unexpected ‘encounters’ with participants can be experienced after the research has officially ‘ended’ (for instance, via social media). This paper thus raises important questions about the artificialness of boundaries between different phases of the research process, and those concerning the researcher and researched. In so doing it echoes sentiments expressed by many contributors to the special issue that reflexive thinking (including about emotional responses) can serve as an additional source of data. What is novel about Burles’ paper is that it identifies how knowledge pertaining to death, dying, and bereavement can also be produced by reflecting upon post-research encounters. As can be seen in this brief overview, the articles in this special issue speak to several important methodological themes, many of which are specific to engaging in research about the end of life. In particular they examine and problematise issues related to the researcher self and positionality, the structural and /or socio-cultural contexts informing death-related research, ethics and ethical practice, and boundaries of/ within this research (interpersonal, epistemological, methodological and processual). Ultimately, they call for a kind of reflexivity that includes and moves beyond emotive personal descriptions of research encounters, as a way of accounting for and discussing methodological implications of doing research in this field. As researchers we know there is a constitutive relationship between how research is done and the knowledge generated through this activity. The authors writing in this special issue have critically assessed the kinds of knowledges being generated within death studies at present by offering reflections on particular aspects of doing of death-related research. Appearing within a journal which acts as a foci for the dissemination of new deathrelated knowledge, we hope that this collection of papers provides a reflective ‘stop-gap’ for Mortality Special Issue Vol 22 (2) May 2017 16 readers; it can be somewhere to take stock regarding how knowledge is produced and its effects on the researchers involved. If this contributes to opening up novel empirical directions in the field and aids the development of new avenues of research that would be one aspiration met. However, as editors, we hope it primarily offers practical guidance to death researchers, and precipitates further publications that can provide similar support by exploring the doing of death-related research in equally reflexive and explicit ways. Acknowledgements We would like to thank the contributors of this special issue for their dedication to producing this issue and the peer-reviewers who encouraged the authors to refine their ideas and supported us as editors. We are grateful for the participants who engage in ever-stimulating discussions held each year at DDB, to the BSA for supporting the annual symposium, and to Kate Woodthorpe who encouraged and enabled this special issue in the first place. We have ordered our names as authors here alphabetically. References Addington-Hall, J. (2002) Research sensitivities to palliative care patients. Cancer Care 11 (3), 220-224. Addington-Hall, J. M., Bruera, E., Higginson, I. J. and Payne, S. (2007) (eds.) Research Methods in Palliative Care. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barnett, M. (2001) Interviewing terminally ill people: is it fair to take their time? Palliative Medicine 15 (2), 157-158. Brennan, M. and Letherby, G. (2017) Auto/Biographical Approaches to Researchi As early career researchers studying the end of life, we
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