The death of any individual is both a problem and an opportunity. This module will deal with the process of dying, the ideas of 'good' and 'bad' deaths, the treatment of the dead, expressions of grief, the location of burial, the reasons why corpses might be exhumed, the uses of funerary commemoration, as well as with people's expectations of the afterlife in early modern society and their ideas about death omens and the returning dead - ghosts, revenants, and even vampires. It will engage with the changes wrought by the Reformations in the various parts of the British Isles, and the ways in which the treatment of the dead can throw light on interactions between different religious groups. We will also look at the manipulation of the bodies and reputations of the dying and the dead, and the means by which they might be harnessed to the changing political purposes of the living, even looking at how the early modern dead can still have relevance in the present day. Throughout, there will be a strong focus on the potential offered by the varied sources that are available to the 'thanatological historian' - the historian of death.