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?
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 to explore the dynamics of ‘closure’ and invites your participation.
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-minute papers, sometimes in dialogue with each other, and an open invitation for closure-focused papers of 10 minutes. All talks are in a plenary context, and not parallel sessions, to provide everyone with a widely shared audience. The call for papers closed on 24th January 2025.
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.
We are delighted to share the full programme with you.
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.
At 7pm on Wednesday evening, there will be a special public lecture - doctor and ceramicist discuss the concept of "closure": Dr Kathryn Mannix (well-known palliative care physician) and Dr Julian Stair OBE (one of the UK’s leading ceramicists) will be in conversation with Professor Douglas Davies FBA, followed by a drinks reception with views overlooking the River Wear and Durham Cathedral. The conversation will be interactive, with plenty of scope for audience participation. Tickets are £10 for this public event (or included within the full conference package). This will be held at the Fonteyn Ballroom at Dunelm House, The Students’ Union Building in Central Durham, where the full two-day Closure Conference will also be held.
Full registration (including lunch and refreshments, plus public lecture and drinks reception): £185
Conference dinner on Thursday, three-courses (optional): £50
Accommodation, bed and breakfast (optional): £56.25 per night
Registration for public lecture only: £10
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch at georgina.m.robinson@durham.ac.uk.
For technical support during the booking process, please contact conferenceadministration.service@durham.ac.uk.
