We invite submissions to the 2023 CDAS Conference on the theme of ‘Innovation at the end of life’. Drawing on one of the key values that has driven CDAS over the last two decades, the 2023 conference will aim to explore innovation and developments from around the world, and across different academic disciplines.

Why Innovation?

In recent years innovation has become a recurrent theme and driver in policy, the environment, health, public services, technology and academia. It can be defined in many different ways. Simply put it can be something new (policy, product, service, practice or organisational change) or an existing intervention or idea applied in a new setting. At the same time it may represent a radical departure from existing practice (rare events which transform societal paradigms of production) or a smaller incremental or discontinuous levels of change, which build upon existing skills or needs (Osborne & Brown, 2013). Taking a wide-ranging view of what constitutes innovation we invite submissions that include but are not limited to:

  • End of life care, organisation, provision, and support
  • Disposal technology
  • Creative policy making and innovative approaches to policy implementation
  • Innovatory practices in relation to interdisciplinary collaboration
  • Theoretical innovation
  • Risk management practices within end-of life and bereavement care
  • Capacity and community building
  • Families, relationships, communities and networks
  • Responses to global and planetary death and loss
  • Pedagogy and education
  • Digital and technological innovation
  • Research methodologies and knowledge exchange
  • Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and other public health emergencies
  • Re-thinking bereavement
  • Innovations of the past
  • Socio-legal decision making within end-of-life care
  • International examples or comparisons of innovation in death and dying

The 2023 CDAS Conference will be on Wednesday 3 and Thursday 4 May and will be entirely online to ensure we can keep costs down for attendees, be accessible to as many people as possible and to be able to welcome a truly international audience. We invite abstracts for presentations in the following formats:

  • Individual paper - 20 minutes, to be put into a 60-90 minute session according to theme and/or time zone
  • Panel session or workshop - 60-90 minutes, for panels we recommend 4-5 presenters to be recruited and coordinated by the panel organiser, please include all panel members’ details in your submission
  • Multi-media session - 60-90 minute sessions, using creative and/or visual methods

You may have noticed that the conference is being held a month earlier in 2023. We are moving the date so that it corresponds with the UK-wide ‘Dying Matters’ week. This is a high profile weeklong national campaign aiming to raise awareness about death, dying and bereavement. As part of our Dying Matters week events, we will also host the annual Beatrice Godwin Memorial Lecture online.