Suicide Voices: narratives of trauma in the globalised workplace

This project examines the ‘epidemic’ of suicides within the globalised workplace during the 2000s and asks why work, or conditions of work, can push some individuals to take their own lives. It aims to bring a critical humanities perspective based on a close reading of suicide testimonies in their social, cultural and economic contexts, to bear on emerging public health research on the rise of economic suicides internationally.

The project investigates what suicidal individuals’ own testimonies can tell us about the social conditions that motivate self-killing in work and therefore provides a critical alternative to current epidemiological approaches to suicide in public health. Building on an emerging collaboration between humanities and public health researchers in the UK and France, the project breaks new ground in its interdisciplinary and transnational research network that expands and deepens our understanding of the workplace suicide crisis internationally, and would lead to further larger funding applications.