Prof. Douglas Davies, Director of Durham University’s Centre for Death and Life Studies hosts this Conference on Wednesday 9th April 2025 and Thursday 10th April 2025 and invites your participation.
A single word can carry many meanings, speak truth, lies, cause confusion, grant wisdom or deception: is ‘closure’ one such word? The Centre for Death and Life Studies at Durham University hosts this two-day event to explore the dynamics of ‘closure’.
The conference partially marks the conclusion of the Digital Death Project in which Durham has shared research with the universities of Aarhus in Denmark, Helsinki in Finland, and Bucharest in Romania, all funded by the European Union’s Collaboration of Humanities and Social Sciences in Europe scheme (CHANSE). While bereavement-support, grief, and the loss of others, along with one’s own end of life concerns provide immediately obvious topics, this cross-disciplinary and international event will embrace ‘closure’ in other domains. Music, for example, concerns composition, delivery, and reception, often aligned with death. So, too, with literature, the power of narratives, poems, and biographies. Then, what might the making of pottery, ceramics, and memorials at large bring to our discussion? Moreover, assisted dying, at personal and social levels, as well as concerns relating to global warming, both raise existential, religious, and philosophical quandaries of their own as far as ‘closure’ is concerned. Such issues are also raised with practices of traditional and woodland burial, cremation (traditional and ‘direct’), alkaline hydrolysis and innovative organic modes of disposal. Furthermore, thinking through the lens of our Digital Death research raises questions concerning how digital and web-based interests relate to the offline lifeworld as far as death, grief, memory, remembrance are concerned. Despite this far-ranging set of topics, this event is determined to focus on ‘closure’ and is not an invitation to address ‘everything’ related to death. Accordingly, there will be a set of invited distinguished speakers representing fields mentioned above, offering 20-30 minute papers, sometimes in dialogue with each other, and an open invitation for closure-focused papers of 10 minutes each in a plenary context. These can be conceptual, practice-based experiences, or work-in-progress.
The time restraints and the ultimate choice of papers will be driven by our desire to have all contributions in plenary form and not as break-out parallel sessions. For open-invitation papers, please send a 200-word outline by 12 noon (GMT) on Monday 20th January 2025 to Georgina Robinson. Acceptance informed by Friday 31st January 2025.
The full list of invited participants will be published at end of January and will include Dr Kathryn Mannix (palliative care consultant and author), Professor Johanna Sumiala (Media and Communication Studies, Helsinki, Finland), Dr Adela Toplean (Sociology, Bucharest, Romania),Dr Dorthe Refslund Christensen (Death Studies, Aarhus, Denmark), Professor Claire Warwick(Digital Humanities, Durham), along with numerous others.
On Wednesday April 9th 2025 there will be a public lecture and discussion on the topic of ‘Closure’. You are invited to this special event but need to book for it. The charge for this single evening lecture is £10. This will be at The Fonteyne Ballroom at Dunelm House, The Students’ Union Building in Central Durham, where the full two-day Closure Conference will also be held.
At this evening lecture Dr Kathryn Mannix, the well-known end of life care physician and author will speak and engage in conversation with Prof Douglas Davies and another highly informed conference speaker. There will also be time for discussion and questions from the floor on this widely contested theme.
