Pia Interlandi

Pia Interlandi is a designer and Associate Professor of Creative Practice in the School of Design and the Built Environment at Curtin University. Her teaching, research and practice explore the materials and materiality of death, dying, disposal and dispersion. Her creative practice, Garments for the Grave, has been commissioned nationally and internationally to demonstrate contemporary approaches to touching, dressing and addressing the dead body.

Pia is called upon for specialist body care and ritual facilitation by professionals in the funeral industry and has personally dressed more than 150 people.

She combines tacit and explicit knowledge bases to traverse and interlace academic and professional practice, advocating for natural death and contemporary funeral practice. She is a regular contributor to public discourse on creativity at end-of-life, family-led funerals, natural burial and emerging disposal technologies.

Her work has been featured in four documentaries and extensively covered by international print, broadcast and digital media across Australia, the UK, US, Japan, China, Germany, Spain and Brazil, with coverage appearing in multiple languages.

Pia is a founding member of the Order of the Good Death (US), Natural Death Advocacy Network (AUS), Australian Home Funeral Alliance and Australian Death Studies Society.

Pia holds a B.A., B.Des (Hons) and PhD in fashion design.