Recent Publications

Recent Publications

Some members of the Centre for Death and Life Studies have recently published books and articles in topics related to centre research and we wanted to make sure people know about these publications so that they may be read and discussed as part of continuing together to understand the complexities of life and death, ritual, history, theology, science and more.

Here are some of the titles:

The Cultural History of Death

Published with Bloomsbury on 25^th January 2024.

In this landmark work, the Director of our Centre for Death-Life Studies, Professor Douglas Davies FBA, alongside expert, era-specific, volume editors and their specially invited authors, has brought together key academic disciplines in a unique scholarly resource framing our mortality through eight themes and six eras.

Eight designated themes within each volume.

Dead and dying bodies. The Sensory aesthetics of death. Emotions, Mortality, and Vitality. Death’s ritual-symbolic performance. Sites, power, and politics of death. Gender, age, and identity. Explaining death: belief, law, and ethics. The undead and eternal.

Six eras traced across two millennia.  

Classical Antiquity. Middle Ages. Renaissance. Enlightenment. Age of Empire. Modern Age.

This scheme makes it possible to read themes as complements within one era or to trace one theme across 2,500 years, all with the help of some 54 scholars from a variety of countries.   

For more information, please visit https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/cultural-history-of-death-9781472536266/.