How do the dead live among us today? What kind of relationships can be established between the living and the dead in today’s society? How can we achieve immortality in the present-day digital society? The consortium Digital Death: Transforming History, Rituals and Afterlife (DiDe) is an interdisciplinary research consortium that addresses the 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. Although death is a universal condition of all humankind, the ways in which death is addressed, managed and performed in a given society and culture varies considerably. The European collaboration on research into death in its digital forms places special emphasis on European histories, cultures, religions, ideologies and technologies that shape the construction of digital death.
DiDe’s methodological focus is qualitative. The material will be gathered by collecting data on social media sites and among communities of mourners as well as professionals working with death-related issues; for example, online funeral services.
Death is a fundamental concern for human existence; hence, in addition to scholarly publications, DiDe advances public scholarship on digital death by developing new and creative ways to communicate, discuss and debate the meaning and significance of digital death in contemporary European societies and engages with different types of publics in diverse non-academic venues and digital settings and contexts.
KEYWORDS:
death, history, ritual, afterlife, future technology, post-mortal communication, public scholarship
CONSORTIUM
- Project Leader: Johanna Sumiala, University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Sciences/Media and Communication Studies, Finland, e-mail
- Douglas Davies, Durham University, Theology and Religion, United Kingdom, e-mail
- Adela Toplean, Bucharest University, Faculty of Letters, Romania, e-mail
- Dorthe Christensen, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Dept. of Scandinavian Studies and Experience Economy, Denmark,
COOPERATION PARTERS
- 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
ACHIEVEMENTS
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
Start date
1 September 2022
Project duration
28 months
Project budget
€ 1 086 814
Funding organisations
