Convocatoria: Politics of Death

Reproducimos a continuación la convocatoria a paneles e intervenciones para el próximo congreso bianual de la Death, Dying and Disposal Conference, que se celebrará en la Universidad de Utrecht (Países Bajos) los 27, 28, 29 y 30 de agosto de 2025, sobre el tema Politics of Death. La fecha tope para la entrega de propuestas es el 30 de noviembre de 2025.

The Death, Dying and Disposal (DDD) Conference is the bi-annual conference of the Association for the Study of Death and Society (ASDS). For the upcoming DDD17 conference, we invite sessions that explore the broad topic of the Politics of Death. 

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?

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

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).