By Dr Renske Visser, Postdoctoral Researcher Small Matters Project
Between August 27 and 30, close to 400 Death Scholars gathered in Utrecht for DDD17, one of the largest death conferences in the world. The three Ds stand for: death, dying and disposal, and the conference takes place every other year. I had the pleasure to have been part of the organising committee, which meant I was able to have a lot of voorpret (anticipatory joy).
For the Small Matters project we proposed our own panel entitled Small matters: Exploring “child,” children and childhood in relation to (multispecies) death and dying, and were fortunate to present in one of the first panels of the conference. After some technical glitches, I kicked-off our panel with a discussion on the place of children in Death Studies, and the limited ways children’s understandings of death and dying have been researched. Jennifer Ann Skriver joined us online and gave her paper Material intra-views: Rethinking multispecies death and dying with children and families. Karin Murris and Joane Haynes ended the panel with their talk Philosophical animism, post/age wo/anderings and ontological tact. It was wonderful to share our ongoing thinking with a wider audience.
After our panel, I chaired a book club session which features Ashes to Admin author Evie King. Honestly, it was one of the easiest sessions I had to chair since the audience had so many questions for Evie. In Ashes to Admin Evie shares stories about her work as a council funeral officer who is charged with carrying out Section 46 funerals under the Public Health Act. This means that Evie organises funerals for people who died with nobody around them to organise the funeral. Evie takes seriously this responsibility and makes an effort to find clues about the deceased person’s wishes and goes to great lengths trying to find next of kin. Evie’s passion to give people a dignified send off was palpable, and her enthusiasm was shared by the audience who continued to ask her a myriad of questions after the formal session ended.
As the conference spanned 4 days, it is impossible to discuss all the highlights, or to attend everything, but I thoroughly enjoyed catching up with death scholar friends who I hadn’t seen in person for years, or to finally meet certain people in the flesh. (I will also admit I did sneak of to visit the Nijntje/Miffy museum). Some other honourable mentions of the conference are, a keynote delivered by Professor Enny Das, where the audience was invited to join a guided meditation to experience their own death, as well as a round table discussion on Care for unclaimed, unexpected and abandoned dead in cities and border zones, and a panel entitled Ordinary necropolitics: Interrogating the state and its absence in everyday death.
If you were unable to attend DDD17, and want to get a sense of what the conference was like, listen to a special Death Studies Podcast conference episode that Dr Bethan Michael-Fox and I created. The episode includes a short interview with main organiser Mariske Westendorp, keynote professor Enny Das, and a myriad of soundbites of attendees, including our own Karin Murris and Joanne Haynes (tune in around 01:24).
I can’t wait for DDD18!