The Politics of Death

Datum
27. August – 30. August 2025 

Con­fer­ence orga­nized by The Asso­ci­a­tion for the Study of Death and Soci­ety (ASDS), Uni­ver­si­ty of Utrecht

17th bian­nu­al DDD con­fer­ence „The Pol­i­tics of Death”
The Asso­ci­a­tion for the Study of Death and Soci­ety (ASDS)
Uni­ver­si­ty of Utrecht
27–30 August 2025

Details:

Despite appear­ing as a uni­ver­sal bio­log­i­cal event, death is and has nev­er been neu­tral. Instead, it is deeply entwined with issues of (in)equality, access, and pow­er dynam­ics. In today’s world, death is per­haps more politi­cized as it ever was before. Wars, envi­ron­men­tal crises, glob­al migra­tion pat­terns, and fail­ing states bring death close to our homes. At the same time, tech­no­log­i­cal, dig­i­tal, and med­ical advance­ments alter our approach­es to deal­ing with, think­ing about, research­ing, and work­ing with death. Such devel­op­ments are equal­ly inher­ent­ly polit­i­cal, both in their ori­gins and their applications.

As prac­ti­tion­ers and schol­ars, how do we nav­i­gate the polit­i­cal dimen­sions of death? How does the polit­i­cal shape our engage­ment with death? And how can we reflect on and poten­tial­ly change our own posi­tions with­in this polit­i­cal landscape?

Pol­i­tics is every­where; every­thing is polit­i­cal. It’s woven into every facet of life, shap­ing how we live, die, and make sense of the worlds in between and beyond. It is the lens through which we address our biggest chal­lenges and seize new oppor­tu­ni­ties. It shapes our sense of right and wrong, fram­ing what we see as moral or immoral. It guides deci­sions, both con­scious­ly and uncon­scious­ly, in every set­ting – from the halls of gov­ern­ment to the inti­mate spaces of home. It spans for­mal author­i­ty and hid­den social pow­er, thread­ing through the spaces we inhab­it, the rules we fol­low, and the sym­bols we embrace. It exists between peo­ple, envi­ron­ments and species, influ­enc­ing every­thing from small exchanges to glob­al reg­u­la­tions. In every inter­ac­tion and insti­tu­tion, there’s an ele­ment of pol­i­tics. Because of this, pol­i­tics is every­where, and every­thing down to the small­est detail is inher­ent­ly political.

For more infor­ma­tion on the con­fer­ence theme, please refer to our web­site: https://ddd17.sites.uu.nl/conference-theme/

We invite schol­ars and prac­ti­tion­ers to sub­mit a pro­pos­al for papers, orga­nized pan­els, round­ta­bles, work­shops, or oth­er for­mats by Sat­ur­day 30 Novem­ber 2024. No excep­tions to this dead­line are possible.

We encour­age pro­pos­als in four types of ses­sion formats:

Organ­ised pan­els and indi­vid­ual papers

Pan­els will be struc­tured in the tra­di­tion­al man­ner of indi­vid­ual paper pre­sen­ta­tions. This will be four (4) pre­sen­ta­tions of 15 min­utes back-to-back, fol­lowed by a 30-minute dis­cus­sion on the pre­sen­ta­tions. All organ­ised pan­els are thus 90 min­utes. The pan­els will be orga­nized in a hybrid (i.e., includ­ing online par­tic­i­pants) for­mat, mean­ing paper pre­sen­ters can present from home. Dis­cus­sions will be orga­nized using chat-moderators.

Round­ta­bles

Round­ta­bles of 90 min­utes in which no more than five peo­ple dis­cuss a par­tic­u­lar theme or issue in front of (and sub­se­quent­ly with) an audi­ence. While a round­table may include short (approx. 5 min) contributions/presentations, the main idea is to cre­ate a live­ly debate, and not to focus on any one or mul­ti­ple presenter(s). To be able to cre­ate such debate, round­ta­bles will not be orga­nized in a hybrid (i.e., includ­ing online par­tic­i­pants) format.

Work­shops

Work­shops of 90 min­utes are char­ac­terised by exper­i­men­ta­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion, inter­ac­tion and/or impro­vi­sa­tion. The aim of work­shops is to organ­ise col­lec­tive activ­i­ties that are open-end­ed and cul­ti­vate pos­si­bil­i­ties for sur­prise, nov­el­ty, and learn­ing. Work­shops will be designed as inter­ac­tive, reflex­ive ses­sions that pri­ori­tise explo­ration, rather than the dis­cus­sion of already estab­lished research results. To make true col­lab­o­ra­tion pos­si­ble and cre­ate safe space, the max­i­mum num­ber of per­sons per work­shop is 16 (includ­ing work­shop con­venors). The work­shops will not be orga­nized in a hybrid (i.e., includ­ing online par­tic­i­pants) format.

Oth­er

We wel­come you to share your ideas of oth­er pos­si­ble for­mats with us. If you would like to sug­gest a dif­fer­ent for­mat and/or are will­ing to run a ses­sion or activ­i­ty with a dif­fer­ent for­mat, please let us know by send­ing an email to DDD17@uu.nl. The DDD17 selec­tion com­mit­tee will then decide if and how to accom­mo­date your idea(s).