Events

SAIF Members and Associates will be gathering in Glasgow to review the year and thank National President Jim Auld for his year in office. The weekend is a fantastic opportunity to find out the latest developments affecting the funeral profession and learn how SAIF is helping members ensure that they are prepared. It’s also a fun social time with plenty of opportunities for re-establishing old friendships and forging new ones.

Ars Moriendi, a festival dedicated to death, will be held in Riga, Latvia from 20-21 March 2020, and will include an academic conference and detailed cultural programme. The conference, Death Experiences, will cover such areas of death studies as ethics and morals, celebration of death, impact on environment, social history of death, and erasing the dead. The festival is organised by Faculty of Theology of University of Latvia in cooperation with partners. The cost of conference is €100, which includes participation, a meal and culture events. Info from deathexperiences@yahoo.com

The National Association of Funeral Directors’ Annual Conference and Annual Meeting is a must attend event within the funeral profession’s year – and the 2020 event is set to be no exception! The 2020 Annual Conference is due to take place in in the city of Liverpool at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Each year the Conference confronts the latest issues facing the profession, challenges perceptions, engenders lively debate and acts as an invaluable platform for NAFD members to network with corporate partners, colleagues and associates.

This year’s theme is Dying To Be Heard – expect tips on active listening, and reassurance for people that they don’t need to be an expert on wills, funerals or advance care planning. More at www.dyingmatters.org/AwarenessWeek

Run by and for the bereaved, these retreats are available to all who have suffered the death of a child of any age, from any cause and no matter how long ago. Early booking is recommended as these are extremely popular. Go to thegoodgriefproject.co.uk/active/

Presentation abstracts invited to cdas@bath.ac.uk by 28 February 2020.

Education event

The International Conference on Grief and Bereavement in Contemporary Society, held every three years, will be hosted in Melbourne, Australia, from 13-17 July 2020. The conference encourages international and multidisciplinary collaboration in research and clinical and community practice, across cultural and geographical boundaries, with opportunity to share the latest developments. Info is at www.icgb2020.com

Keynote speakers are Dr Philip Stone (iDTR, UCLAN), Shannon Taggart (Independent Artist and Photographer), and the Creative Histories of Witchcraft project team comprising of Dr Will Pooley (University of Bristol), Poppy Corbett (Independent Playwright) and Anna Kisby-Compton (Independent Poet and Researcher).



Death & Culture III promotes the continuing engagement with the study of death, and acts as a forum for networking and the sharing of multidisciplinary death scholarship. Abstract papers are welcome with contributions on topics including, but not limited to:

• Death and the popular imagination • Work in death and death-adjacent industries • Governance of mortality • Death in the digital age • Mass death in the age of individualism • Artistic approaches to mortality

This internationally reaching conference brings together death scholars, including postgraduate students, artists, the charity sector, the professional environment, as well as those who might not consider themselves death scholars whose work overlaps with thanatological enquiry.


This year's conference is set to focus on vulnerable subgroups amongst those bereaved by suicide and taboo issues directly associated with such deaths. More than 400 people from at least nine countries usually attend this annual event and it is always over-subscribed. Cost is £140 + booking fee + VAT – book on suicidebereavementuk.com/suicide-bereavement-conference