12 – 13 June 2025 - Online

As part of CDAS’s 20th anniversary year we invite abstracts to our annual conference on the theme of ‘Death in transition’. An intentionally open theme, we welcome papers that address the theoretical, empirical, conceptual, practical, ethical, and methodological issues and consequences of death and dying, and their aftermath. Transitions bring precarity and uncertainty, but also new opportunities or unexpected stability. Abstracts could address the following questions:

  • Transitions in death studies: What new themes, theories, methods, voices and ontological perspectives will or should dominate death studies? CDAS is celebrating its 20th Anniversary. What will death studies be discussing in 20 years’ time?

  • Transitioning hierarchies: How can the geographies and knowledges that dominate death studies evolve? How is knowledge produced and what ontologies and cosmologies are included or dismissed? How can we transition over interdisciplinarity and disciplinary boundaries?

  • Death and the transitioning world: The world is changing and experiencing overlapping crises, from conflict to pandemics to ecological change. How are death and loss playing a part in these shifts? How can death studies help us understand environmental and ecological loss and grief? Can this give us insights into how adaption and new systems can be just, fair and inclusive?

  • Death, dying and its aftermath in transition: With changes happening to how people die and what happens afterwards, how are death and its aftermath being impacted by digital tools and artificial intelligence? What are the new thanatological imaginations, renewed debates about assisted dying, and new technologies in relation to death and dying, as well as new laws and regulations in relation to death and dying? How is death experienced between people at the start of life, within familism, networks and communities, and across the life course?

The 2025 CDAS Conference will be on the 12 and 13 June and will be entirely online to ensure we can keep costs down for attendees, can be accessible to as many people as possible, and to make sure we are able to welcome a truly international audience.

To ensure the event is manageable and so that participants can attend as many papers as possible we cap the two days at around 50-60 papers and 3-4 roundtables/interactive sessions in total. Please make sure to explicitly address the conference theme in your abstract submission to give yourself the best chance of being selected by the conference organising team.

We welcome abstracts for presentations in the following formats:

  • Individual paper - 20-25 minutes including questions, to be put into a 60-90 minute session according to theme and/or time zone
  • Roundtable - 60-90 minutes, we recommend a maximum of 4 presenters recruited and coordinated by the roundtable organiser, and detailed in the submission, including agreement to contribute by all
  • Interactive sessions or workshops - 60-90 minute sessions, using creative and/or visual methods, or with tasks for audience participants

You will be asked to specify the type of presentation in your submission. Please submit your 200 word abstract by 12pm GMT on 31 January.