UWE, Bristol, UK    7th July 2016

Keynotes including: Professor Carola Wingren, SLU, Sweden

This event will bring together academics from death studies, planning, geography, landscape and other related subjects to discuss the spatial implications and desired outcomes from ongoing and interrelated dynamic changes affecting contemporary society. We will be sharing experience from across the European context, and also reflecting on how the spaces and practices of deathscapes simultaneously hold both global diversity and local particularity, including issues of gender, ethnicity and the politics of provision.

We focus on two overarching and interrelated themes: 

1. Notions of postsecular cities, and the attendant flows of people, including within Europe and from the (post)colonial global South to Europe, and the impact of this on changing practices of bodily disposal and memorialisation.  

2. The planning and management of new cemeteries/crematoria and other sites of bodily disposal and remembrance in the increasingly pressing context of climate change and environmental challenges which stem from this.

From these themes, we invite paper which address (but are not limited to) the following questions:

a. How are deathscapes changing in a time of increased global mobility, and in what ways should they respond to international migration?

b. In what ways can cemetery/crematoria design respond to the challenges of climate change to help provide for sustainable environments?

c. What role can cemeteries/wider deathscapes play in developing and maintaining sustainable and cohesive communities?

d. What are the key challenges for the future planning of cemetery/crematoria space? Both across Europe and in specific local contexts?

Please send abstract of up to 300 words to Katie McClymont [log in to unmask] or Avril Maddrell [log in to unmask] by 29th April 2016.

The event is free, but places are limited.

We are exploring the possibility of publications on the basis of this workshop and would appreciate an expression of interest in this from those submitting abstracts.

Best wishes,

Avril Maddrell