Dr Sharon Mallon

• Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA)
• Former Member of the British Sociological Association
• Former Chair of the British Sociological Association Social Aspects of Death, Dying and Bereavement Study Group
• Member of the Association for the Study of Death and Society

• 2023 Recognised Research PhD Supervisor
• 2021 Certificate of HE (Psychology), The Open University, UK
• 2016-2020 Level 2 BACP Counselling Skills, Level 3 BACP Certificate in Counselling Studies
• 2018 Senior Fellow, Higher Education Authority
• 2009 PhD, School of Social Work, (UCLan), Impact of Student suicide on their friends.’
• 2003 BSc (Hons) Open (Health and Social Policy) 2:1, The Open University, UK

• Suicide and suicidology
• Suicide prevention and postvention
• Suicide bereavement
• Student suicide and institutional responses within higher education
• Sociological approaches to death, dying and bereavement
• Mental health and help-seeking
• Critical and gender-sensitive approaches to suicide
• Qualitative research
• Sensitive research methods and ethics
• Researcher wellbeing
• Social work education
• Teaching sensitive subjects
• Academic publishing, peer review and editorial leadership.

My research examines suicide, bereavement, death and dying from sociological, social work and interdisciplinary perspectives. I am particularly interested in suicide prevention and postvention, the experiences of people bereaved by suicide, help-seeking, and the ways in which gender, shame, stigma, culture, inequality and social relationships shape suicidal distress and access to support.

My current research includes gambling-related harm, indebtedness, shame and suicidality; changing death, wake, funeral and burial practices in Northern Ireland; and social and cultural meanings associated with death and bereavement. I also have a longstanding interest in qualitative research involving sensitive subjects, including research ethics, researcher wellbeing, sensitive supervision and the emotional demands of working with difficult accounts.

My wider interests include student suicide and wellbeing as well as institutional responses within higher education, disability research ethics, social work education, and approaches to teaching sensitive and emotionally challenging subjects.

• 2026: Principal Investigator, Gambling, Indebtedness, and Suicide: The Roles of Shame, Gender, and Culture in Help-Seeking. Arts and Humanities Research Council, as part of the UK Research and Innovation Research Programme on Gambling. Funded value: £49,281.
• 2025: Principal Investigator, Death Practices in Transition: Meaning, Ritual, and Change in Northern Ireland. British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant. Funded value: £9,616.
• 2022: Best Practice for Staff in Fitness to Study Procedures. Open University Praxis funding. Funded value: £3,000.
• 2020–2021: Student Experiences of Online Tutorials. Open University Praxis funding. Funded value: £5,000.
• 2019–2020: Literature Review of Mental Health Promotion Activities 2010–2020. Health Service Executive, Ireland. Funded value: £5,000.
• 2018–2019: The Use of Facebook to Promote Student Engagement and Assessment. Teaching Excellence Project funding. Funded value: £3,500.
• 2018–2019: Babies and Textbooks: The Impact of Pregnancy and Early Motherhood on Studying at The Open University. Open University Praxis funding. Funded value: £3,000.
• 2018: Adapting Digital Social Prescribing for Suicide Bereavement. Queen’s University Belfast funding. Funded value: £5,000.

I undertake paid academic publishing and editorial work, including my role as Editor-in-Chief of Illness, Crisis & Loss, published by SAGE. I am also an author and editor of academic books and may receive royalties arising from these publications. I have no other commercial or enterprise interests to declare.

I teach across undergraduate and postgraduate social work programmes. At undergraduate level, my responsibilities include teaching foundational sociology and psychology for social work, research methods, critical appraisal and the preparation and supervision of applied research projects and dissertations.

At postgraduate level, I teach contemporary research in social work and supervise desk-based dissertations. My teaching supports students to develop research literacy, critically evaluate evidence and apply sociological, psychological and research knowledge to social work practice.

I also contribute to dissertation supervision, placement learning, academic and pastoral support, assessment and moderation, curriculum development, Fitness to Practise processes and doctoral supervision. A central theme across my teaching is helping students engage critically and safely with sensitive subjects, including suicide, self-harm, trauma, death, dying and bereavement.

• Mallon, S., Runacres, J., McCormack, F., Riley, V. and Motta-Yanac, E. (2026) ‘Shame, stigma and indebtedness in gambling-related harm: A rapid review of help-seeking and suicidality’, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 23(9), 1141. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph23091141
• Bayley, Z. and Mallon, S. (2025) ‘“Maybe I’ve got lost in the system somewhere”: Patient experiences of palliative care: A case study of Frances’, Mortality. https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2025.2567551
• Mallon, S., Murphy, S. and Ogut, S. (2025) ‘“I just get on with it”: Narratives of women who become mothers during undergraduate study’, British Journal of Sociology of Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2025.2538704
• Mallon, S., Borgstrom, E. and Murphy, S. (2025) ‘The art of “sensitive” supervision: Supporting, sharing and strengthening’, in Handbook of Sensitive Research in the Social Sciences. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 55–63.
• Mallon, S. and Towers, L. (eds) (2024) Death, Dying and Bereavement: New Sociological Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge.
• Good, A., Elliott, I. and Mallon, S. (eds) (2024) Advances in Disability Research Ethics. Bingley: Emerald Publishing.
• Borgstrom, E., Mallon, S. and Murphy, S. (eds) (2022) Unpacking Sensitive Research: Epistemological and Methodological Implications. Abingdon: Routledge.
• Mallon, S., Walker, K., Bayley, Z. and Griffiths, C. (2022) ‘Practitioner perspectives on best practice in non-treatment factors that support the delivery of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for depression’, Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, 29(3), pp. 463–471. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpm.12815
• Mallon, S. and Smith, J. (eds) (2021) Preventing and Responding to Student Suicide: A Practical Guide for FE and HE Settings. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
• Borgstrom, E. and Mallon, S. (eds) (2021) Narratives of COVID: Loss, Dying, Death and Grief During COVID-19.
• Mallon, S., Borgstrom, E. and Murphy, S. (2020) ‘Unpacking sensitive research: A stimulating exploration of an established concept’, International Journal of Social Research Methodology.
• Mallon, S. and Elliott, I. (2019) ‘The emotional risks of turning stories into data: An exploration of the experiences of qualitative researchers working on sensitive topics’, Societies, 9(3), 62.
• Mallon, S., Galway, K., Rondon-Sulbaran, J. and Leavey, G. (2019) ‘When health services are powerless to prevent suicide: Results from a linkage study of suicide among men with no service contact in the year prior to death’, Primary Health Care Research & Development.
• Leavey, G., Mallon, S., Galway, K., Rondon-Sulbaran, J., Hughes, L. and Rosato, M. (2017) ‘The failure of suicide prevention in primary care: Family and GP perspectives – a qualitative study’, BMC Psychiatry.
• Mallon, S., Galway, K., Rondon-Sulbaran, J. and Leavey, G. (2016) ‘An exploration of integrated data on the social dynamics of suicide among women’, Sociology of Health & Illness.
• Mallon, S. and Stanley, N. (2015) ‘Creation of a death by suicide: A study of the processes by which the bereaved determine that the death of a friend is suicide’, Crisis.