End-of-life doulas offer non-medical supports, guidance, and comfort for people with advancing serious illness, including those close to them. They have been gaining a lot of attention from the public, media, and health care systems as our previous ideas and traditions of care for dying, death, and bereavement continue to shift within the 21st century.… Continue reading
In November 2021, we held a 2-day workshop at our School of Interdisciplinary Studies in Dumfries, Scotland on the theme of Death and Design. The theme was chosen in honour of our visiting scholar, Professor Bruce Tharp from the University of Michigan’s School of Art and Design. Bruce was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to… Continue reading
Death is not monolithic. It is better to think about deaths and dyings. So said a participant about what she had learnt from our half day symposium on reading and writing death, in May 2019, held at the St Mungo Museum for Religious Life and Art in Glasgow . Not monolithic indeed. Our plan for… Continue reading
One of Dame Cicely Saunders’ most enduring legacies is the importance of being present, of witnessing, at the end of life. Academic witnessing at the margins of life and death can require balancing an intense intimacy with simultaneously gaining enough distance to ‘see’ significant or representative broader concepts. What does this mean for us as… Continue reading
As the trends of population growth and aging further the need to expand end of life care globally, it is important to understand that conceptions of appropriate end of life care vary cross-culturally. This global dimension is at the forefront of The End of Life Studies Group’s research. On the 15th of May, the Group… Continue reading
Cicely Saunders once stated that ‘suffering is only intolerable when nobody cares’. Yet suffering is a broad concept with many aspects. Members from the Glasgow End of Life Studies Group recently attended a two-day philosophy conference entitled ‘Suffering and Autonomy at the End of Life’. Speakers came from a range of academic disciplines – including… Continue reading
In 1961 Cicely Saunders, in a short article written for a general audience, observed: ‘A society which shuns the dying must have an incomplete philosophy’ [1]. The remark is loaded with import. In her observation, ‘the dying’, seem to constitute a known social category. Not only neglected, they are persistently avoided, ignored, or rejected through… Continue reading
I’m delighted to announce that we are hosting a free postgraduate student workshop on Witnessing at the End of Life, which will take place on the 11th and 12th of June 2018. This two day workshop is designed for postgraduate students by postgraduate students. My fellow PhD student Jacqueline Kandsberger and I are organising the event… Continue reading
