Sara Murphy, PhD, CT, is a death educator, Certified Thanatologist (Association for Death Education and Counseling), and suicidologist with fifteen years of scholarly, pedagogical, and professional experience in the field. She is a faculty member at the University of Rhode Island where she has developed and taught over fifty interdisciplinary courses on thanatological theory; death, dying, and bereavement; biopsychosocial grief experiences; grief writing; and stigmatized means of death. She is also an affiliate faculty member in the Thanatology Graduate Program at Marian University, where she teaches courses on suicide and on the literature of loss.

Publicly, Dr. Murphy conducts diverse and dynamic professional development and educational workshops and seminars on specialized topics of death, dying, and bereavement nationwide for businesses, schools, and professional organizations.

Dr. Murphy is also a suicide and bereavement consultant; a contributing writer at Remembering a Life, the public-supporting site of the National Funeral Directors Association; an expert witness on suicide and on disenfranchised grief, and the author of the booklet, “Grieving Alone & Together: Responding to the Loss of Your Loved One during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” a free resource for helping professionals and individuals published by the Funeral Service Foundation.