Marc-Antoine Berthod

Marc-Antoine Berthod is a Professor and Co-dean at the School of Social Work and Health at HES-SO, leading the LaReSS research laboratory. His work focuses on death studies, palliative care, and funeral practices, with a particular interest in anthropology and qualitative research. He has spearheaded projects like Necropolis (2021-2025), exploring contemporary funeral transitions and mourning in old age, and Appreciating Death (2017-2020), an ethnographic study of assisted suicide in Switzerland.

Key research interests include:

• Funeral rituals and ecological cemetery design
• Psychosocial impacts of death in workplaces
• Legal and ethical frameworks of assisted suicide
• Mourning practices during pandemics
• Cultural dimensions of mortality

Grants & Projects:

• Swiss National Science Foundation (CHF 324,000) for assisted suicide research
• HES-SO grants for ecological cemetery studies (CHF 67,450)
• Collaborations with CNRS France, WHO-affiliated institutions, and Swiss palliative care networks

Labs/Teams: Director of LaReSS, collaborating with anthropologists, sociologists, and healthcare professionals.