Susan Srigley, Ph.D.
Susan Srigley, Ph.D., is Professor of Religions and Cultures at Nipissing University. She won the Chancellor’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2008 and 2024. Susan is passionate about teaching, and her students have always appreciated how much her love of teaching shows in the classroom. Her doctoral research focused on ethics, imagination, and literature. She has published two books and several articles on the American novelist Flannery O’Connor, and she has been invited to give talks across Europe and the US. She is currently writing a book on Flannery O’Connor and death.
As a death educator in the postsecondary sector for the past 20 years, Susan has been teaching death studies in her department, both in person and online, including courses on death, dying and spirituality, death and the afterlife in world religions, and social justice issues in end-of-life care. She published an article for the Conversation about fostering death awareness in the classroom. https://theconversation.com/as-a-death-doula-and-professor-who-teaches-about-dying-i-see-a-need-for-more-conversations-about-death-210450
Her Instagram account @death.ambassadors details her adventures in death education and raising death awareness with her university students.
Susan endeavors to create a safe and inclusive space for learning and talking about difficult subjects, particularly in her death courses. Students in her classes discover how the death phobias in our culture are worth exploring and discussing, and they come to realize how open conversations and greater death awareness are in fact healthy and life-affirming. Susan is dedicated to helping students navigate their own death anxieties through education and bring a deeper level of knowledge and awareness into their lives and careers.
Susan has presented workshops internationally on death education in the post-
secondary sector, with workshops at the Garrison Institute, for the New York Zen Centre for Contemplative Care Symposium, and she has presented with her students at the international online death festival, Lifting the Lid. She has given talks to Expedia Group and the Ontario Association of Cemetery and Funeral Professionals.
She has been interviewed on several podcasts (https://vancouverislandmentalhealthsociety.org/podcast/death-educator-susansrigley-on-why-we-need-to-talk-more-about-dying/ )
She has been a palliative care volunteer for the past 23 years and is a trained death doula. Susan has taught the modules on death and spirituality to volunteers for the Near North Palliative Care Association, as well as mentoring new palliative care volunteers.
She has offered several educational workshops at her local hospice on compassionate end-of-life care.
Susan has her coffin made, reclaimed northern white pine, and it is currently serving time as a blanket box in her home, till needed.
Trusted Death Doula
Cathy Yuhas, RN, CEOLD
Cathy J. Yuhas is a registered nurse, certified end-of-life doula, and certified grief educator with more than 37 years of experience supporting patients and families through illness, caregiving, dying, and grief. As the founder of Dying Matters, LLC, Cathy helps individuals and families have the conversations that often feel difficult but deeply necessary, including advance care planning, quality of life, caregiver support, legacy work, and what it means to have a peaceful and meaningful end-of-life experience.
Her approach is compassionate, grounded, and deeply human. Cathy brings both clinical knowledge and a doula’s presence to her work, offering emotional, practical, and spiritual support without judgment. She believes that talking openly about death helps people live with more clarity, connection, and intention.
Cathy is also the author of Walking Each Other Home: Guiding Caregivers and Community Through the Sacred Passage of Death, a book inspired by her years as a nurse and end-of-life doula.
