• Yasmin Jiwani, Concordia University
• Sam Han, Brunel University London
• Tal Morse, Haddash Academic College, Jerusalem, Departments of Photographic Communication, Politics of Communication, Behavioral Sciences
• Mika Myllyaho, The Finnish National Theatre
• Christopher Bratton, Center for Arts, Design and Social Research (CAD+SR)
• Petter Korkman, TIUKU: Public Information Cultural Factory

Project website

Project achievements:

Background/Context: The consortium Digital Death: Transforming History, Rituals and Afterlife (DiDe) is an interdisciplinary research consortium that addresses cultural and social transformation of human death in contemporary society as it is characterised by digital saturation of the current collective social and cultural existence. It brings together the Universities of Durham (UK), Aarhus (Denmark), Bucharest (Romania) and Helsinki (Finland, with Helsinki leading and overseeing the entire programme.)

Objectives and Aims: Throughout history, death has typically been presented alongside and orchestrated by religion and/or other ideological belief systems and societal institutions. DiDe builds on a premise that in contemporary digital society, death is largely and increasingly experienced through and managed by affordances of digital communication and related cultural, social and institutional practices and conventions. The present circumstance affects death as a social and cultural phenomenon in multiple ways. It transforms ideas, beliefs and conceptions of death in society, alters relationships between the living and the dead and influences the range and character of bereavement practices, as well as reconditioning values and morals associated with human death, and reconfiguring institutional structures that manage and control death in society. The DiDe consortium investigates the topic of digital death by approaching human death as an object of accelerated cultural and social transformation in digital society. In DiDe, digital death is defined as a concept that is more than just death and death-related practices perceived, experienced and performed in a digital context. DiDe specifies death as a phenomenon articulated, experienced and performed in interaction with digital communication and culture. This refers to a dialectical approach in which the digital is seen to shape perceptions and experiences of death in society and culture but also being shaped by it. DiDe’s methodological focus is qualitative. Special emphasis is placed on online and offline ethnography, textual and visual digital media analyses and interviews.

Key Findings and Impact: DiDe’s major findings can be divided into three categories: conceptual, methodological and empirical. The conceptual work contributes to a more nuanced theoretical understanding of digital death as an idea and concept. Methodological findings are grounded in developing arts-based research and collaborations with artists as means of new and innovative knowledge production. Empirical findings produce new knowledge e.g. on people’s grief practices in digital contexts and social media platforms, digital afterlife of data, local nature of mourning and the internet history of digital death. In addition, DiDe places special emphasis in public scholarship and knowledge exchange and actively communicates research beyond merely academic contexts including different cultural and public sector actors such as library, theatre and media.

Publications:

• Christensen, D., Ritual as a busy intersection: on improvisation, imagination, invention, independence, inspiration and intuition in death-related rituals, Handbook of Contemporary European Death Rituals, 2025 (in press)
• Christensen, D., Leaving Yourself Open: ritualizations of resonance in grief,  Creative and Aesthetic Ways of Grief. All Things Reimagined, 2025 Routledge, (in press)
• Christensen, D.R. & O’Connor, M., Introduction, Creative and Aesthetic Ways of Grief. All Things Reimagined, 2025 Routledge, (in press)
• Christensen, D.R. & O’Connor, M. (eds.), Creative and Aesthetic Ways of Grief. All Things Reimagined, Routledge, 2025 (in press)
• Christensen, D., Sumiala, J., Introducing the Special Issue Digital Death: Transforming Rituals, History, and the Afterlife, Journal of Social Sciences, 2024, https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/13/7/346
• Christensen, D.R., & Sumiala, J. (eds.), Digital Death, Special issue of The Journal of Social Sciences, 2024
• Davies, D., Afterword: Play, Personhood and Digital Mortality, Journal of Social Sciences, 2024, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13080384
• Davies, D. (ed), A Cultural History of Death: Volumes 1-6: The Cultural Histories Series Douglas Davies Bloomsbury Academic, 2025
• Davies, D., Robinson, G., Ecologies of Death, Routledge, 2025
• Davies, D., Robinson, G., British Crematorium Managers & Covid-19. Durham: Durham University Centre for Death and Life Studies. https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2185756, 2024
• Harju, A., Streaming death: terrorist violence, post-death data and the digital afterlife of difficult death, Difficult Death, Dying and the Dead in Media and Culture, 2023, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-40732-1
• Harju, A., Theorising digital afterlife: relationality, materiality and the affective potential of data, Social Sciences, 2024, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13040227
• Harju, A., Pentikäinen, L., Grief Labour on Instagram: Resilient Influencers and Platformed Grief, (accepted for publication, 2025), Nordic Journal of Media Studies.
• O’Connor, M., A perennial pattern returning? Harnessing Grief and Bereavement Studies in Digital Grief Studies present and future, Social Sciences, 2024,  https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13040208
• O´Connor, M., The Napper Legend, Creative and Aesthetic Ways of Grief. All Things Reimagined, 2025 Routledge, in press
• Sumiala, J., Harju, A, Visual journalism and the contested terrain of victimhood, Routledge Handbook to Visual Journalism, 2025 (in press)
• Sumiala, J., Jacobsen, M, Forbidden/Spectacular/Digital: Mapping the Evolution of Death Studies on Social Sciences, Social Sciences, 2024, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13020101
• Sumiala, J., Mourning ‘Strangers’ in the Age of Mediatized Death, Handbook of Contemporary European Death Rituals, 2025 (accepted for publication)
• Sumiala, J., Death, Spirituality, and Afterlife, The Handbook of Religion and Communication, 2023
• Sumiala, J., Pentikäinen, L., “Deathstyle” Gurus on Instagram – How Platformed Institutions Shape Grief Management in Digital Society, Death and institutions, 2025 (accepted for publication)
• Sumiala, J., Harju, A., Sonnevend, J., Goodnight Ma’am The Queen’s death as a media event and the contestation of legacies in live participation, Media, Culture & Society, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437241308751
• Toplean, A., Global Digital Death and Glocal Dying: Theoretical Challenges and Possible Research Directions, Glocalism: Journal of Culture, Politics and Innovation, 2023
• Toplean, A., The Glocalization of Death in the Digital Age: Traits and Limits in special issue Communication and Glocalization: Media, Culture, and Society in the 21st Century, in Frontiers in Communication, vol. 9, 2024, https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1456304
• Toplean, A., Living and dying on the edge in the digital age. An interview with Andrei Vieru on why closure and boundaries matter in science, art, and life, Mortality, vol. 29, nr. 2, pp. 343–359, 2024, https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2024.2334093
• Toplean, A, Death and the Sacred in the Digital Age in Ziółkowska, J. & Galasinski, D. (eds.), Handbook of Language and Death, Bloomsbury, 2020 (accepted for publication)
• Toplean, A, Socio-Phenomenological Reflections on What Digital Death Brings and Denies in Terms of Relational Experiences to Orthodox Romanians, Social Sciences, 2024, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12120686
• Sumiala, J., Harju, A., Sonnevend J., Goodnight Ma’am: The Queen’s death as a media event and the contestation of legacies in live participation, Media, Culture & Society, 2025, vol. 47: 4, https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437241308751, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01634437241308751
• Sumiala, J., Pentikäinen, L.,  ‘I Was So Lost…And Who Brought you Back? Me.’: Deathstyle Gurus and the New Institutional Logics of Mourning on Instagram, Death and Institutions: Processes, Places and the Past, Death and Culture Book Series, Bristol University Press, 2025,  https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.18323750-978-1529236668, https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/death-and-institutions
• Sumiala, J., Harju, A., Visual journalism, witnessing, and the contested terrain of victimhood, The Routledge Companion to Visual Journalism, 2025, Abingdon 10.4324/9781003391340-9,781E+12, https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003391340/routledge-companion-visual-journalism-nicole-dahmen-thomson
• Sumiala, J., Jacobsen, M. H., Digital Death and Spectacular Death, Social Sciences, vol. 13(2), 2024, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13020101
• Sumiala, J., Christensen, D., Introducing the Special Issue Digital Death: Transforming Rituals, History, and the Afterlife, Social Sciences, vol. 13(7), 2024, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13070346
• Harju, A., Theorising Digital Afterlife as Techno-Affective Assemblage: On Relationality, Materiality, and the Affective Potential of Data, Social Sciences, vol. 13(4), 2024 https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13040227
• Sumiala, J., Mourning ‘Strangers’ in a Digital Mediascape, Handbook on Contemporary European Death Rituals, Brill, 2025
• Sumiala, J., Metadeath: The Social Lives of the Dead in the Age of AI, New York University Press, 2025
• Sumiala, J., Hjorth, L., Gerber, K., Pitsillides, S., Routledge Companion to Digital Death, Routledge, 2025
• Sumiala, J., Christensen, D., Benfield, D. M., Bratton, C., Unquiet Death: Digital Traces, Performative Shadows, Sonic Echoes, Diaphanes, 2025
• O’Connor, M., Grief Universalism: A Perennial Problem Pattern Returning in Digital Grief Studies?, Social Sciences, vol. 13(4), 2024, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13040208
• Nowaczyk-Basińska, K., Kiel, P., Exploring the Immortological Imagination: Advocating for a Sociology of Immortality, Social Sciences, vol. 13(2), 2024,  https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13020083
• Morse, T., Digital Séance: Fabricated Encounters with the Dead, Social Sciences, vol. 12(11), 2023,  https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12110635
• Toplean, A., Socio-Phenomenological Reflections on What Digital Death Brings and Denies in Terms of Relational Experiences to Orthodox Romanians, Social Sciences, vol. 12(12), 2023, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12120686
• Davies, D., Afterword: Play, Personhood and Digital Mortality, Social Sciences, vol. 13(8), 2024, https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13080384
• Toplean, A., Living and Dying on the Edge in the Digital Age. An Interview with Andrei Vieru on Why Closure and Boundaries Matter in Science, Art, and Life, Mortality, vol. 29(2), 2024 https://doi.org/10.1080/13576275.2024.2334093
• Toplean, A., The Glocalization of Death in the Digital Age: Traits and Limits, Frontiers in Communication, vol. 9, 2024, https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2024.1456304
• Toplean, A., Death and the Sacred in the Digital Age, in: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Language and Death, 2025, https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bloomsbury-handbook-of-language-and-death-9781350302020/
• Toplean, A., Fuzzy Mortality in the Digital Age: Two Children’s Perspectives on Death in a Merged World, Mortality, Taylor & Francis, 2025, https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/cmrt20
• Davies, D., Robinson, G., Ecologies of Death, Routledge, 2025
• Davies, D., Robinson, G., British Crematorium Managers & Covid-19, Centre for Death and Life Studies, Durham University, 2024, https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2185756/british-crematorium-managers-covid-19
• Sumiala, J., Charlie Kirk’s Online Mourning as Ritual Activity: What Would Victor Turner Say?, in: The Digital Life of Grief: Mourning in the Age of Social Media, Routledge, 2025
• Sumiala, J., The Digital Departed: How We Face Death, Commemorate Life, and Chase Virtual Immortality by Timothy Recuber, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 130(6), 2025, https://doi.org/10.1086/734795
• Christensen, D., Ritual as a Busy Intersection: On Improvisation, Imagination, Invention, Independence, Inspiration and Intuition in Danish Death-Related Rituals, in: The Handbook of Contemporary European Death Rituals, Brill 2025
• Christensen, D., Leaving Yourself Open: Ritualizations of Resonance in Grief, in: Creative and Aesthetic Ways of Grief: All Things Reimagined, Routledge, 2025
• Sumiala, J., Christensen, D., Private Grief – Public Mourning. Betwixt and Between Online Ritualisations, Liminality and Closure, 2025
• Christensen, D., O’Connor, M., Creative and Aesthetic Ways of Grief: All Things Reimagined, Routledge, 2025
• Christensen, D., O’Connor, M., Introduction, in:  Creative and Aesthetic Ways of Grief: All Things Reimagined, Routledge, 2025
• O’Connor, M., Narrating Nabber: The Creativity of Posthumously Storying Complex People, in: Creative and Aesthetic Ways of Grief: All Things Reimagined, Routledge, 2025
• Sumiala, J., Hutton, M., Digital Mourning: Renegotiating Visual Death Practices in Social Media, Research Handbook on Visual Communication, Routledge, 2025