Community

The Centre has a role in the wider community, where public lectures and symposia on subjects related to death are now being more widely attended. CDAS members are active in this area, giving talks nationally and internationally as well as acting as consultants and academic advisors to a number of organisations. As public interest in this area grows, the media have also begun to take more of an interest, and we will have an expanding role to play in that development.

CDAS members, associates and PhD students are available to contact for advice on their specialist subjects; either contact them directly via our people pages, or email cdas@bath.ac.uk in the first instance.

To view public lectures and symposia, please visit our news and events section.

A number of networks are facilitated by CDAS to enable practitioners, acdemics and students in this field to meet, share ideas and communicate with others they would not usually come into contact with. For details of community activities and networks you can get involved in, please click on the links to the right of this page.

Association of the Study of Death & Society

End of Life Care Strategy - Public Awareness Coalition

CDAS mailing list

JISCmail list

Facebook

Association for the Study of Death and Society

Increasing financial pressures within universities and funding bodies, along with the impending retirement of key academics, makes protecting and promoting recent achievements in death studies a matter of urgency. In response, a brand new professional association for those involved in research hand teaching in this area held its Inaugural General Meeting at the University of Bath in June 2009.

The primary purpose of the Association for the Study of Death and Society (ASDS) is to promote the study of death in the arts, humanities, social and allied sciences. Launched officially at the ninth international conference on the Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal (DDD9) at the University of Durham in September 2009, the ASDS represents the interests of its members by fostering the production and dissemination of high quality, ethical research, supporting professional development and the teaching of death studies, and shaping policy agendas. DDD9 offered would-be members their first opportunity to join the ASDS, and a stall with information leaflets was staffed throughout the conference. Planned membership benefits include:

• Reduced subscriptions to the journals Mortality and Death Studies
• Reduced registration fees for future DDD conferences
• Access to a members area within the ASDS website

The exclusive members’ area will contain data on members, their professional activities and interests, as well as a discussion forum and newsletter.

The elected council of the ASDS includes Douglas Davies (DDD representative), Sheila Harper (Councillor), Jenny Hockey (President and Chair)., Carol Komaromy (Mortality representative), Duncan Sayer (Councillor), John Troyer (secretary), Christine Valentine (Councillor) and Kate Woodthorpe (Treasurer).

All enquiries, plus offers of support and encouragement, can be sent to John Troyer (J.Troyer@bath.ac.uk) . Please visit the ASDS website regularly as it will be developed throughout the next year. By joining the Association of Death and Society you will be contributing to an important innovation in an already vibrant field of work – one that each of us stands to benefit from.

End of Life Care Strategy – Public Awareness Coalition

In 2008, as part of its new End of Life Care Strategy for England, the Department of Health asked the National Council for Palliative Care to lead a national coalition to promote public awareness around death, dying and bereavement. Over the past few months initial steps have been taken to set up the coalition and preliminary work is now underway. The purpose of the coalition is to promote awareness and support changing attitudes and behaviours towards death, dying and bereavement, and through this to make ‘good death’ the norm.

An inaugural meeting of the public awareness coalition forum took place on 13 May 2009 with around 100 people attending, each representing a different organisation whose work involves working with the public in the areas of death, dying and bereavement. The purpose of the meeting was to launch the forum for the first 100 organisations who have signed up to the coalition and to seek the views of those present on the emerging recommendations for development and delivery of the programme and its proposed priorities. The presentations from each of the speakers at the initial meeting are now available to view at http://www.ncpc.org.uk/coalition/events/index.html

The intention is that the coalition forum will continue to increase in size, developing a broad inclusive membership and providing an opportunity for all those committed to raising public awareness in death, dying and bereavement to become involved. The coalition is open to all organisations across all settings and sectors in England. 

The first newsletter which details exactly how the coalition has been formed, who is leading the initiative and a snapshot of those already involved is now available at http://www.ncpc.org.uk/coalition/

The coalition are keen to increase their membership to include as many representatives from all geographic areas of England who are working in end of life care, including bereavement charities, faith groups, funeral service professionals, education providers and individuals offering services at the end of life among many others.  You can sign up to join the coalition at the above website, you just need to provide the contact details of your organisation and nominate a lead person. You will also be asked to provide a couple of sentences on your current public awareness activities.

CDAS mailing list

CDAS send out a mailing list each month which contains details of up and coming events and conferences, calls for papers for journals and conferences, jobs and study opportunities as well as news and research which may be of interest. Subscribers are able to send in details of their own activities for inclusion into the newsletter. To join, just email us at cdas@bath.ac.uk

You can view all the past newsletters on our webpages at http://www.bath.ac.uk/cdas/news/newsletters/index.html

JISCmail

This list is for scholars in the social and medical sciences and the humanities interested in the social context of death, dying and the disposal of the dead to raise issues for discussion, circulate information about current developments, and seek help with research (e.g. bibliographic inquireies). Subscribers can post information or enquiries for other members of the list.

This on-line forum is moderated by CDAS, but subscribers manage the content. To join, visit http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/DEATH-SOCCON.html. If you are already a member, please do feel free to post anything at any time, it is for your use.

Another list you may find helpful on JISC is Dark Tourism. Dark Tourism is the act of travel to sites of death, disaster and the seemingly macabre... Learn more about the 'darker side of tourism' by visiting The Dark Tourism Forum at www.dark-tourism.org.uk

There are many other jisc lists covering religion, archirecture, art and design and medicine to name but a few. Visit the jiscmail homepage to search for something to suit you.

Facebook

Want to connect with other PG students who aren't going to ask you 'what made you want to study that?' every time you mention your research interests?

Then this is the group for you!

This group is for PG students, whose research interests somehow include Death Studies, to remain in contact with one another. We're a pretty disparate lot; often there might only be one or two of us in a department, university, city, country... who are studying whatever the subject might be, from a deathly point of view.It's primarily for networking - to share news, info, interesting tidbits, etc. relating to all things Death Studies. It should also be quite useful for things like sharing references, posing questions, and that sort of thing.

It's an entirely closed group, so only those who have been specially admitted into the fold can see what's posted here. To join, you need to create a facebook account at http://www.facebook.com/, then email us at cdas@bath.ac.uk. We can then send you an invitation to join the group. Once you join, ... this is YOUR group, so please start discussion threads, post links, add photos, etc.

We are looking for someone to take on the running of this group - if you are intested in taking this group froward -please get in touch at cdas@bath.ac.uk