We warmly invite you to attend our Closure Conference and encourage you to register here.

The conference will take place at Dunelm House, the Students’ Union Building, in central Durham. The conference will begin at 1:15pm on Wednesday 9th April and conclude at 5:30pm on Thursday 10th April, except for those wishing to attend the conference dinner at Hatfield College from 7pm on Thursday 10th April.

Across two days, attendees will hear from over 20 speakers representing a diverse range of professional and disciplinary perspectives drawing from anthropology-sociology, theology, ceramic-pottery art, music, funeral directing, funeral celebrants, and palliative care, as well as more personal reflections on loss and grief. All talks, some longer and some shorter, are in a plenary context and not parallel sessions as to provide everyone with a widely shared audience.

On Wednesday evening, there will be a special public lecture with Dr Kathryn Mannix (well-known palliative care physician) and Dr Julian Stair (one of the UK’s leading potters) in conversation with Professor Douglas Davies, followed by a drinks reception with views overlooking the River Wear and Durham Cathedral. This event is included in the full conference package.

The detailed programme will be available shortly. Book here.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch at georgina.m.robinson@durham.ac.uk.

The next Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal conference (DDD17) will be held in Utrecht next year, and registration is now open. The conference theme is ‘The politics of death’:

The politics of death

Despite appearing as a universal biological event, death is and has never been neutral. Instead, it is deeply entwined with issues of (in)equality, access, and power dynamics. In today’s world, death is perhaps more politicized as it ever was before. Wars, environmental crises, global migration patterns, and failing states bring death close to our homes. At the same time, technological, digital, and medical advancements alter our approaches to dealing with, thinking about, researching, and working with death. Such developments are equally inherently political, both in their origins and their applications.

As practitioners and scholars, how do we navigate the political dimensions of death? How does the political shape our engagement with death? And how can we reflect on and potentially change our own positions within this political landscape?

Death is political and performs the political. This is evident not only in death itself, but also in the dead (who can become political actors), their bodies, the process of dying (which is, amongst others, infrastructurally related to political discourse and inequalities), and bereavement (which can also become a political act). The political aspects of this theme extend beyond national or international political institutions (such as governments, state actors, multinational corporations, or political or religious alliances) to encompass everybody and everything that has to do with (the exercise of) power and moralities, e.g., families, kin, neighbourhoods, friendship networks.

Further information is available on the conference website.