What if the phone in your pocket is one of the most meaningful grief objects you own?

In this episode, I'm joined by Distinguished Professor Larissa Hjorth, a digital ethnographer and socially engaged artist at RMIT University here in Melbourne, where she holds an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship in the School of Media and Communication. For two decades, Larissa's work has explored the role mobile media plays in intergenerational connection, intimacy, ageing, loss and death across Japan, South Korea, China and Australia. Her current Fellowship, The Mourning After, examines mourning through mobile media, from the death of a loved one to ecological grief, framing grief as a cultural practice and building what she calls grief literacy. It builds on her earlier book, Haunting Hands (Oxford University Press, 2017), and her latest book, Mourning on Mobile Media: Everyday Affective Witnessing (MIT Press), is free to read online. In 2025 Larissa curated an exhibition of the same name at RMIT Design Hub Gallery, exploring grief as a social practice for hopeful futures.

I was lucky enough to visit The Mourning After, and in this conversation Larissa takes us behind the curtain. We talk about how she brought together 13 artists and 26 free public workshops to make grief visible, from Maree Clarke's kopi mourning caps, heavy with clay and worn until they fall away, to custodian guides that give our treasured objects a story to carry into the future. Larissa explains why ritual matters so much, why grief doesn't have to be dark, and why creative practice can say what words often can't.

We then move into the digital world. Larissa shares what she has learnt about posting as a form of eulogy, why choosing not to share can be just as meaningful as sharing, and how people hold onto old phones rather than risk losing a loved one's voice message. We explore the phone as a witness in moments of disaster and collective grief, what happens when social media accounts are left without a legacy contact, and the ethics of death bots and AI afterlives. As Larissa puts it, when you ask someone about their phone, you're really inviting them to talk about their life, their relationships and their losses.

Remember; You may not be ready to die, but at least you can be prepared.

Take care,

Catherine

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