Nuri McBride is a writer, perfumer, academic, and community organiser. Her work covers a wide range of topics including olfactive cultural education, labour rights in the fragrance trade, funeral poverty, and end-of-life care for marginalised peoples.
Nuri spent the first twelve years of her career in refugee resettlement and torture treatment. She worked primarily in Kenya, Thailand, Israel, and the United States before transitioning to academia and eventually the private sector. At the same time, she became involved with facilitating Jewish death rituals and joined her local Chevra Kadisha. Becoming a Metaheret led to Nuri advocating for greater inclusiveness in Jewish death observances and a return to traditional green death practices for non-Orthodox communities.
Nuri also has had a profound interest in olfaction since she was a child. This interest led to her applying her skills as a researcher to delve deeper into the subject. Eventually, she apprenticing under several perfumers focusing on traditional Middle Eastern fragrance-making and distillation techniques.
Nuri is currently the Program Curator for the 2021 Scent & Society lecture series at the Institute of Art and Olfaction. She explores the intersection of olfaction and death rituals with the Death/Scent project. She is currently developing a fragrance line which will launch in Winter 2021 and is working on several writing projects, to be announced in the near future. She has had her work featured in a number of publications.
In her free time, Nuri can be found obsessing over Guillermo del Toro’s movies, Umberto Eco’s books, odd smelly things, and historical needlework.
What People Say
“She does impeccable research, and her work is fascinating, timely, and very down to earth.”
Saskia Wilson-Brown
[Nuri’s] enthusiasm, insights, and support have bolstered me immensely in the past year, with regard to my creative projects. Nuri writes beautifully and extensively at her own blog Death/Scent.
S. Elizabeth
Nuri McBride’s fascinating research on xenophobia and racism in olfactive culture provides tools for “decolonising our noses”
Lauryn Mannigel
