Editors: Catriona Brickel, Elaine Kasket and Kate Woodthorpe (Centre for Death & Society, University of Bath)

As the global population peaks and more people than ever before encounter dying and loss, the profile of death, dying and bereavement is entering something of a golden age. At the same time, in recent decades death has acquired a new character due to multiple cultural phenomena, including (but not limited to): the rise of AI and techno-optimism; the expansion of choice in the funeral sector; the increased diversity of death mediators; the authority of social media influencers; the growth in and consumption of pathographies; and the augmentation of therapeutic approaches to (and pathologisation of) grief. Today’s networked world has introduced multiple opportunities for money-making at the end of life, ranging from care and the process of ending life, to memorialisation products and bereavement therapy, to the massive expansion in applications of and proposed use cases for deceased people’s data.

In response, this new and innovative edited collection for submission to the Death and Culture Series published by Bristol University Press will seek to broaden engagement with issues of commercialisation by considering the multitude of ways in which money and mortality relate before, during and long after death. Given the speed at which much of these products and services are growing, this is a crucial moment to critically engage with the causes and implications of such provision, including issues of value extraction from the dead, consumer vulnerability and exploitation, and the role of state intervention and regulation. This new edited collection will create an international and interdisciplinary dialogue across the chapters to document, analyse, and critique the commercialisation of death, in examining what is happening, why, and what - if anything - to do about it.

By bringing together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, this edited collection will thus showcase and problematise the variety of ways in which death is commercialised today, its risks and its potential. It will explore the ways in which the end of life and its aftermath have been, and can be, utilised to make profit and claim expertise, asking what the consequences of this are, for individuals, communities, and societies around the world. We are now inviting proposals for chapter contributions.

Suggested topics might include:

• The price at the end of life: the industrial complex of ‘care’, care home and end-of-life care funding models, such as private equity and charity fundraising, the rise in death doulas and commercial practices around doula education, commercialisation around creating wills, powers of attorney and advance care plans, and the price of ending life.
• (Financial) cost of body disposal: contemporary methods of funding funerals via crowdfunding and pre-payment plans, the short-term costs of funerals, the costs of ‘international’ or geographically distanced bereavement experiences, the price of land for burial, the trade-off between environmental and financial costs.
• Commercialising bereavement: physical memorial products, from ashes diamonds to memorial benches, digital memorial products, the use of professional mourners and the rise of social media influencers monetising grief narratives.
• Sustained profit from death: profiteering from mass death events, grief therapy, digital death, including grief apps and AI reanimation, and the wider commercialisation of the data of the dead.

We are particularly interested in receiving chapter proposals from early career researchers and scholars, such as those from the Global South, whose voices are underrepresented in the field.

Details:

Please submit a chapter abstract of between 300–500 words and a 100-word author biography including location and institutional affiliations(s) if appropriate to the editorial team by Friday 6th November 2026.

The collection editors will review all submitted proposals and notify applicants of their status by the end of November. We will then submit the book proposal to the publisher and go through the publisher's editorial process.

If the collection is accepted, chapters will be around 5,000 words (including notes and bibliography), with first drafts of manuscripts due in October 2027. All chapters will be subject to peer review; chapter proposal acceptance does not guarantee publication.

Expected publication will be mid-end 2028.

Please email your proposal and author biography to cb2795@bath.ac.uk by 6th November 2026.