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Conference: The Senses and Spaces of Death, Dying and Remembering

The Grief Series Part 6:
Journey with Absent Friends
Image Matt Rogers

Draft Programme

Day 1: Tuesday 27th March
9.00-9.30 Welcome and Coffee
9.30-10.30 Keynote lecture
Allan Kellehear Compassionate Cities and why we need them
10.30-10.45 Tea/coffee
10.45-12.45 Parallel panel session 1
Panel a: Spaces of Care
Agnes Arnold-Forster ‘A Small Cemetery’: Death and Dying in the Contemporary British Operating Theatre
Julie-Marie Strange and Kevin Bolster Dying well: sense and space, past and present
Sue Jeppesen ‘I hadn’t expected the prospect of facing my own mortality to be so disorientating, so dislocating’: the practices used by individuals, families, and communities to manage processes of dying and remembrance in a hospice
John Harries Community response to the attempted closure of Pilgrims Hospice Canterbury
Panel b: Sites of burial and death rituals
Claire Nally Cross Bones Graveyard: Memory and Submerged Sites of Mourning
Özge Kelekçi The Spaces of Collective Oblivion: A Comprehensive Analysis of Sincan Potter’s Cemetery in Ankara, Turkey
Ingeborg Baldauf Some observations on the relation of life/death, gender and place (North Afghanistan)
Perundevi Srinivasan ‘You Should not Cry’: Vaishnava Discourses on Death and Mourning
12.45-13.45 Lunch
13.45-15.30 Art and Performance
The Grief Series Ofrendas
Alice Boulton-Breeze  Failed Attempt at a Memorial
Claire Blundell-Jones  Rosalind Uncut
Stephen Donnelly  Market Forces
Sheena Graham-George  Limbo
Siobhan Maguire-Broad  Comfort in Sorrow
Posters
Emma Jones Continuing bonds and the therapeutic potential of nature following stillbirth: An exploratory qualitative study
Kelsie Root  Human Remains on Display: The Museum and Social Media
15.30-15.45 Tea/coffee
15.45-16.45 Keynote lecture
Avril Maddrell Mapping grief and consolation in body-mind, place and landscape
16.45-17.30 Drinks reception
Evening Optional meal at Shears Yard
Day 2: Wednesday 28th March
9.00-9.15 Welcome and Coffee
9.15-10.45 Parallel panel session 2
Panel a: Environments and landscapes
Luís Ferro Sacred Places: the 'Cubas' from southern Portugal. Funerary or military buildings?
Jennifer Owen Waiting to reach this lull when the sadness has become slightly less desperate' - Dealing with material a/effects: distancing memories and emotion in self-storage
Vincent Jacot Balancing Commemoration and Commercialization:The Intersections of Death and Mass Tourism
Panel b: War and its commemoration
Rob Page Then and Now: The Sensory Experience of Centennial Commemoration of the First World War
Laura Harrison Memorialising medieval conflict and death in twentieth-century Scotland
Hanna Smyth The significance and spatial relationships of First World War battlefield memorial locations
10.45-11.15 Tea/coffee
11.15-12.45 Parallel panel session 3
Panel a: Facing mortality
Sarah Waters Suicide letters: Death as protest in the French workplace
Fiona Malpass Living with a desire to die: Exploring the experience of existing in a space between living and dying
Mehrunisha Suleman Muslim perspectives on death and dying
Panel b: Families, cultures and everyday remembrance
Ann-Marie Foster Spaces of mourning: the construction of family remembrance in the early twentieth century
Linda Maynard ‘I pass them when I walk in the house and I pass them when I walk out of the house’: fraternal curations of wartime loss
Beverly Ayling-Smith Cloth, loss and memory
12.45-13.45 Lunch
13.45-15.30 Ellie Harrison The Grief Series
Laura King Living with Dying
15.30-17.00 Open Space
Time for discussion and to view the artworks, performances and posters
17.00-17.30 Plenary Round Up

 


Call for Papers:

The Senses and Spaces of Death, Dying and Remembering:
Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Live Art Bistro, Regent Street, Leeds

27-28 March 2018

Academic and public interest in death and dying is growing. With the increasing popularly of death cafes, the death positive movement and celebrations like ‘Day of the Dead’, the common idea that death is a taboo subject is questionable. But when it comes to a more personal conversation about death and dying in our own lives, it becomes more difficult. This conference will consider spatial, emotional and embodied perspectives on death, dying and remembrance. It will instigate a conversation about the role of space and the way being in particular places can affect our emotional states, as part of a process of remembrance.

We invite contributions of all kinds on the following questions:

  • Where do the memories of the dead live?
  • What role do our senses play in acts of remembrance?
  • How might different spaces trigger particular emotional memories of those who have died
  • What practices do different individuals, families and communities use to manage processes of dying and remembrance?
  • Any other questions or related topics

The conference will explore how and why attitudes and practices relating to death and dying differ over time and between cultures across the world. It brings together artists, academics and professionals working in the area of death and dying to question how we might learn from these different ways of ‘doing death’, and in particular, how space, emotion and the senses interact in processes of remembrance. We welcome proposals for academic papers, posters, short provocations, films, artistic interventions, or any other format we can support.

Our confirmed keynote speakers are Professor Allan Kellehear (University of Bradford) and Dr Avril Maddrell (University of Reading). The programme will also feature contributions from international artists.

This conference is jointly organised by The Grief Series team, led by Ellie Harrison, and the University of Leeds’ ‘Living with Dying’ project, led by Dr Laura King.