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indulgent and merely subjective, Brennan and Letherby argue that auto/biography is rigorous precisely because it highlights explicitly the social location of the researcher and makes clear their ‘role in the process of constructing rather than discovering the story/ the knowledge’ (p. 157). They identify a tradition of using these approaches in death studies, and underscore the 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.