Allan Kellehear

Allan Kellehear is Professor in Health & Social Care at Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK.

His research interests include interdisciplinary studies of conduct and experiences at the end of life in palliative care, intensive care, and aged care contexts; public health/health promotion approaches to palliative care; and the sociology of death & dying. He is a medical and public health sociologist and has written extensively on the human experience of dying. Recent books include Visitors at the End of Life: Finding meaning and purpose in near-death phenomena (Columbia University Press 2020) and The Inner Life of the Dying Person (Columbia University Press 2014). Aside from these and similar studies, he is also known for the establishment and early advocacy of public health approaches to end-of-life care that incorporate health promotion and community development principles. His recent book in this area (co-edited with Dr Julian Abel) is the Oxford Textbook of Public Health Palliative Care (Oxford University Press 2022). He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, former president of both the Association for the Study of Death and Society (ASDS) and Public Health Palliative Care International (PHPCI).