Events

2020 has thrown up a unique set of challenges that has not only disrupted our lives, but has also transformed experiences of dying, death, disposal, and commemoration.

This webinar will challenge us to rethink our expectations about what a ‘good death’ is or could be, based on more than a decade of interdisciplinary research in the international death care sector.

COVID-19, for example, has forced people to be creative in how they harness technology to ‘be present’ for others and make mourning meaningful. However, online funerals are only one possibility in an ever-expanding imaginative field of socio-technical innovations provoked by human death and disposal in a changing world.

From human composting and vertical cemeteries to funerary robots and ash scattering via drones, Professor Tamara Kohn and Dr Hannah Gould will provide a tour of possibilities – some established, some creative, and some, at first glance, even outrageous. Ultimately, they hope to destabilise our taken-for-granted ideas and desires about how we mark the end of life.

Professor Kanta Subbarao will provide an insight into this virus that has changed our lives in 2020 and share her knowledge on COVID-19 vaccines. Kanta is a virologist and a physician with specialty training in paediatric infectious diseases.

There will be the opportunity for Q & A at the end of the presentation.