Before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted conventional thinking around death and dying, Death Cafés around the world were encouraging people to reflect on their mortality. Death Cafés are informal social spaces where strangers meet to ‘have a conversation’ about death and dying. They can be organised by anyone, anywhere in the world. With death rates now… Continue reading
Until Death Café meetings moved from cafes, libraries, community centres, cemeteries, etc. to the online sphere due to social distancing measures, it had not occurred to me to specify that my PhD thesis is about face to face Death Café meetings. Online Death Cafés were an exception, not the rule when I conducted my fieldwork… Continue reading
Even at The Lancet When it comes to assisted dying, even one of the world’s leading medical journals can get caught out. It’s curious in this age of ‘precision medicine’, that leading commentators and thought leaders in the medical field can still struggle with crucial terms and definitions about assisted dying. Whatever your views on… Continue reading
Professor David Clark, Dr Marian Krawzyck, Dr Naomi Richards, Dr Sandy Whitelaw, Anthony Bell – all members of the Glasgow End of Life Studies Group – share some recent insights. ‘Palliative care will assume a central and vital role in the care for patients in an influenza pandemic’ (Rosoff 2006) [1] The importance of delivering… Continue reading
Autumn 2019 saw a team of us in the Glasgow End of Life Studies Group set out into unknown educational waters. Over a three-week period, we delivered a free online course called End of Life Care – Challenges and Innovation. We possibly didn’t anticipate how long our preparations and course building would take. We probably… Continue reading
It is with huge pleasure this month that we embark upon a truly global initiative within our team – a new programme of online learning in end of life studies. In our research group at the University of Glasgow we feel we belong to a worldwide community of people with a shared interest in questions… Continue reading
“Death is terrifying”, writes the author Susan Cheever, “…because it is so ordinary. It happens all the time”. Continue reading
Back in March 2019, a group of researchers from the UK and Japan gathered in Dumfries to launch the Mitori Project. The ESRC funded project aims to examine end of life care issues in the UK and Japan in three workstreams: ‘Culture’, ‘Practice’ and ‘Policy’. Time flies! Six months have passed since the first workshop.… Continue reading
