This unique multi-disciplinary social science programme examines how societies organise, ritualise, theorise and symbolise death, and how social practices around death change. It enables students to ''think outside the box 'of their own profession or discipline, not least by learning alongside students from other professions, disciplines and countries. The MSc Death and Society is a one-year full-time or two-year part-time postgraduate programme. Also available are the Certificate and the Diploma in Death and Society - these are intermediate postgraduate qualifications covering parts of the MSc programme, and can be taken in their own right. Individual units can also be taken on a stand alone basis.

19-06-2010. Venue: Bath

A Good Send Off: Local, Regional & National Variations in how the British Dispose of their Dead

Centre for Death & Society Annual Conference: What is a good send off? A good send off in Stornaway might not be at all good in Surbiton. The exclusion of women from the burial ceremony in some Welsh valley funerals would appal some women in Fife who help lower the coffin into the grave. Funerals in Totnes are typically very different from funerals in Tottenham. And that's just for starters- when we add in the customs and practices of those who have migrated to the British Isles from elsewhere, the picture becomes ever more complex.

The conference will try to sort out which of these pictures is the more accurate. Are there enduring local and regional differences? Or do these inevitably wither in the face of a standardised modernity? In other words, do history and geography still count? The conference will therefore not look at the new varieties of funeral practice introduced by those who have arrived in the UK since the second half of the twentieth century, nor at social class differences. Nor will we look at how Britain differs from other countries, even though international differences in funeral culture and organisation are substantial. Important though these all are, they are for another day, and perhaps another conference, or conferences!

On June 19, CDAS is running a one-day conference in Bath titled 'A Good Send Off: Local, Regional & National Variations in how the British Dispose of their Dead'. The aim of the conference is to ask whether there is any such thing as a British way of death, or whether there is actually a mosaic of practices. And if there is a mosaic, what patterns might be discernable within it? Venue: Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute, Bath, UK. www.bath.ac.uk/cdas/news/conferences/index.html