Welcome to the Centre for Death & Society (CDAS) Conference 2026.
This year鈥檚 theme is 'Death and Power', and we are excited to share our programme. This includes a wide range of thought-provoking papers, roundtables, three keynote talks, and a selection of interactive sessions/workshops.
As some sessions overlap, you can decide which sessions you would like to attend. The programme below is broken down by time, session type, and session title/contents to help you find the sessions you're interested in and plan which you want to attend.
The session types are:
- Keynote talk: We鈥檒l all be together to listen to our fantastic keynote speakers and ask questions after their presentations
- Paper session: Cameras off, but come ready to listen and ask questions. During these sessions you'll hear about multiple papers covering a broad topic
- Roundtable session: Cameras on and a willingness to take part in discussions
- Workshop/interactive session: Come with your camera on, and a willingness to take part in discussions
- Break: Take some time out to rest and reflect
Download our CDAS Conference 2026 handbook for more information about each session
Day 1: Wednesday 17 June
| Time | Session type | Session title/contents | Chair |
|---|---|---|---|
| 12.40pm to 1.30pm | Keynote talk | Carceral Care and the Production of Care-less Deaths: A Sociological Analysis of Prolonged Dying after Traumatic Brain Injury (Ian Stobirksi) | Naomi Pendle |
| 1.30pm to 1.40pm | Break | - | - |
| 1.40pm to 2.40pm | Paper session: Objects or subjects | Religion, Power and Death (Adem Sa臒ir); The Subversive Necropower of the Dead (Joshua Hurtado Hurtado); The Agency of Dead Bodies in Iran鈥檚 January 2026 Mass Killings: Sovereignty, Refusal, and Ritual Innovation Cancer Use Social Media to Negotiate Illness, Identity and Mortality (Hajar Ghorbani) | Yael Levi |
| 1.40pm to 2.40pm | Paper session: Digital | Artificially Alive: An Exploration of AI Resurrections and Spectral Labor Modes in a Postmortal Society (Tom Divon and Christian Pentzold); Relational Distance and AI Reanimations of the Dead in Japan: Who Can Be Reanimated? (Akiko Orita); Digital Power, Vulnerability and Resistance: How Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer Use Social Media to Negotiate Illness, Identity and Mortality (Bel茅n Jim茅nez and Alejandra Casta帽eda Fe) | Catriona Brickel |
| 2.40pm to 3pm | Break | - | - |
| 3pm to 4pm | Roundtable | What Deaths Matter in Death Studies? Global Power and Inequalities in the Study of Death (Naomi Pendle, Fisayo Ajala, Jean Beniot Falisse, Nada Afiouni, Safa Suliman and Yumna Masarwa) | Jane Ribbens McCarthy |
| 3pm to 4pm | Roundtable | Hail the Victorious Dead: Elements of Power in Memorialisation (Robert Spinelli, Robyn Lacy, Kaylee Alexander, Katie Clary, Carolyn Dillian, Jessica Elton, Jessica Freeman and Ciara Henderson) | Sayendri Panchadhyai |
| 3pm to 4pm | Roundtable | Tiredness of Life in Older Persons: The Power and Politics of Death through a Multidisciplinary Lens (John Troyer, Jana Rek-Kralova, Kenneth Chambaere, Els Van Wijngaarden) | Rachel Cummings |
| 4pm to 4.15pm | Break | - | - |
| 4.15pm to 5.15pm | Paper session: Inequalities and social justice | Euthanasia and Care Ethics: A Review of the Chilean Debate From a Power Perspective (Vicente Santib谩帽ez Aravena); When Systems Decide Who Deserves Care: Power and Death at the Margins (Courtney R. Petruik); Exploring Grief-Fuelled Activism with the Youth Coalition Combating Islamophobia (YCCI) (Lisa McLean, Maryam Al-Sabawi, Ayesha Islam) | Yumna Masarwa |
| 4.15pm to 5.15pm | Paper session: Violence | Who May Move, Who May Die: Borders, Racial Capitalism, and Necropolitical Sovereignty (Grace McWilliam); Hunted, Haunting Bodies: Israel鈥檚 Necropolitics Against the Dead in Gaza (Rimona Afana); Death, Accountability, and Bureaucracy: Inquiry Commission as a Technology of Power in South Asia (Salman Hussain) | John Troyer |
| 5.15pm to 7pm | Break | - | - |
| 7pm to 8pm | Workshop | Power in Health and Care 69色情片: A Case of Epistemic Injustice (Amanda Roberts) | Kate Woodthorpe |
Day 2: Thursday 18 June
| Time | Session type | Session title/contents | Chair |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9am to 10am | Keynote talk | Dying as a Martyr; Negotiating Memory, Morality and Power (Aroob Alfaki, Abdirahman Edle Ali, Yumna Masarwa, Narges Emami) | Kate Woodthorpe |
| 10am to 10.10am | Break | - | - |
| 10.10am to 11.10pm | Paper session: Knowledge and authority 1 | Rest in Empire: Colonial Control Over Pacific Deathways (Amy Henry); The power of law: medico-legal death investigation (Imogen Jones); Empowering the grieving to establish new traditions in the landscape of East End (John Harris) | Jana Rek |
| 10.10am to 11.10pm | Paper session: Marginalised life and death | Asylum, Death and Power (Tony Walter); Examining The Contradictory Power Structures Surrounding Deaths in Psychiatric Detention (Carly Speed); Regulating Deaths in Detention: Vulnerability and the Atomisation of Harm (Laura Haas) | Emma Gilbert |
| 11.10am to 10.30am | Break | - | - |
| 11.30am to 12.30pm | Paper session: Knowledge and authority 2 | 鈥楢fraid of a Hard Death鈥�: Assisted Dying, Power, and Everyday Moral Reasoning in Mass Observation (Kathryn McEwan); The Power of Language: Exploring the Experiential Relational and Ontological Erasures of 鈥楪rief鈥� (Jane Ribbens McCarthy, Korina Giaxoglou and Lystra Hagley-Dickinson); Writing the Dead: Colonial Power and the Historical Knowledge of Death on the Eastern Cape Frontier (Lari Hallowes-Welman) | Sayendri Panchadhyai |
| 11.30am to 12.30pm | Paper session: Death past and present | Spectacle Without Consent: Anatomists, 鈥淕iants,鈥� and the Continued Abuse of Power Over the Dead (Lucy Hyde); The Doctor Too Many For Death: Satirising Power at the Eighteenth-Century Deathbed (Dan O'Brien); Inequality in Life and Death for People Experiencing Homelessness (Glenys Caswell) | Elena Vasiliou |
| 12.30pm to 12.45pm | Break | - | - |
| 12.45pm to 1.30pm | Roundtable discussion | What does it mean to really care? An Ethical Conversation about Care (Mary Hodgson) | Kate Woodthorpe |
| 1.30pm to 2.50pm | Paper session: Loss - human and non-human | Geographies of Death During Famine (Abraham Diing Akoi and Gisma Musa); The Emergence of Ecological Grief From a Transformative Phenomenology Inquiry (Lucja Lange); What Autonomy? Power, Structure, and Agency in Assisted Dying (Christopher Lyon) | Tal Morse |
| 1.30pm to 2.50pm | Paper session: Institutions | Bureaucracy at the Bedside: Institutional Power, End-Of-Life Companionship, and the Afterlife of Aaperwork (Albert Sobilo); Conflicts of Power in Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking (VSED) (Aly Dickinson and Jagna Feierabend); Counting Deaths, Producing Invisibility: Data, Medical Neglect, and Mortality in Greek Immigration Detention (Adriana Fili) | Emma Gilbert |
| 2.50pm to 3.10pm | Break | - | - |
| 3.10pm to 4.10pm | Interactive session | Communications of Grief: A New Framework (Sarah Helton) | Rachel Cummings |
| 3.10pm to 4.10pm | Workshop | Workshop: Emotion, Power, and Creative Grief Practices in the Shadow of Non-Finite Loss (Amelia Seraphia Derr) | Jane Ribbens McCarthy |
| 3.10pm to 4.10pm | Roundtable | Death Studies Futures: Thinking Beyond Disciplinary Boundaries (Sarah Wagner, Ruth Toulson, Sarah Richardson, Ann Neumann, Barbara J. King, Robin Reineke) | Ylva Hard af Segerstad |
| 4.10pm to 4.30pm | Break | - | - |
| 4.30pm to 5.50pm | Paper session: Transitions | 鈥楳y Body, My Choice鈥�: Direct Action in Death Care (Emma Moormann); Right to Die: Ageing, MAID, and Neoliberal Necropolitical Logics in Canada and the UK (Bethany Simmonds and Hermanpreet Singh); Advancing a Decolonial and Intersectional Framework for Understanding Contemporary Mourning and its Creative Expressions (Rayanne Haines); Power Over Death: Haitian Vodou, Zombies and the Politics of Dead Bodies (B Laboy) | Diana Teggi |
| 4.30pm to 5.50pm | Paper session: Material culture and language | Who Decides Where Grief Belongs? Memorial Benches and Public Remembrance in England (Anna Malpas); Voluntary Gravedigging, Power and Agency in Rural Ireland (Ciara Henderson and Damien Brennan); The Ethics of the Funeral Eulogy: Lies, Omissions, and Perceived Falsehoods (Sarah Carter-Walshaw); Mobilizing Freedom: Black Funeral Directors and the Power of Professional Vehicles (Deborah Streahle) | John Troyer |
| 5.50pm to 7pm | Break | - | - |
| 7pm to 8pm | Interactive session | Agency and Empowerment Through Embodied Grief Companionship (Eleonora Ramsby Herrera) | Kate Woodthorpe |
Day 3: Friday 19 June
| Time | Session type | Session title/contents | Chair |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9am to 10am | Paper session: Knowledge and authority 3 | Bodies as Evidence of the Future: Centenarians, Transhumanist Discourse, and the Power of Death Narratives (Chenyang Guo); I Have a Mouth, But I Won鈥檛 Eat: a Case of Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking (Kieran Kejiou); Society toward Suicide: Biopower, Responsibility, and Death in Japan (Norichika Horie) | Naomi Pendle |
| 9am to 10am | Paper session: Loss and its impact | Deconstructing Grief across Cancer Caregiving and Bereavement: A Constructivist Grounded Theory (Ananya Bajaj); Death and Loss in Co-Housing Communities: Negotiating Freedom, Care and Conformity in a Swedish Context (Annika Jonsson and Cathrin Wasshede); The Power of Parenting a Baby Who Has Died (Helena Morais) | Catriona Brickel |
| 10am to 10.15am | Break | - | - |
| 10.15am to 11.15am | Paper session: Babies, children and young people | How Child Death Can Empower Action: Data, Voice, and Prevention (Sylvia Stoianova); Grieving Divergently (Erica Borgstrom); Co-Creating Death Literacy With Young People: Reflections on Power and Agency From a Participatory 69色情片 Study in Canada (Amarens Matthiesen, Ryan Kent and Nika Rovensky) | Yael Levi |
| 10.15am to 11.15am | Paper session: Resistance and representation | State at the Dock: Mobilizing Public Sentiments and Thriving Public Sphere in the Aftermath of Death (Sayendri Panchadhyayi); Framing Death as Victory: Death as the Ultimate Spectacle of Military Power (Tal Morse and Sara Kopelman); Laughing at Death: Humour, Mortality and Decolonial Power in Contemporary Visual Culture (Marko Stamenkovic) | Johanna Sumiala |
| 11.15am to 11.30am | Break | - | - |
| 11.30am to 12.40pm | Roundtable | Roundtable: Power, Autonomy and Incapacity: Rethinking Future Decision (Kirra Moser, Nola Ries, Victoria Shepherd) | Kate Woodthorpe |
| 11.30am to 12.40pm | Roundtable | Roundtable: The Struggle for Power over Death in Digital Afterlives (Patricia 沤ivkovi膰, Leah Henrickson, Nevena Jevremovi膰, Edina Harbinja) | Lucia Crowther |
| 11.30am to 12.40pm | Roundtable | Cursus Rerum: (Post)human Conflicting Cultures of Loss in the Anthropocene (Christopher Lyon, Sarah Bezan, Jesse Peterson, Naomi Pendle) | Tony Walter |
| 12.30pm to 12.40pm | Break | - | - |
| 12.40pm to 1.30pm | Keynote talk | Bombs, Boats, and Bodies: The US 鈥淒epartment of War鈥� in an Era of Exceptionalist, Maximalist Cruelty (Sarah Wagner) | Naomi Pendle |