The Centre exists to foster and conduct research into life-values, beliefs, and practices that relate to living and dying. It seeks to encourage and facilitate interdisciplinary approaches wherever possible between the humanities, the social and life-sciences and medicine. It also benefits from the support of Durham University's Institute of Advanced Study. For more information about the Centre and its projects, please use the links to the left.

NEWS - Publication

Cultural Blending in Korean Death Rites by Dr Chang-Won Park will soon be published (June 2010) by Continuum.

This is a developed form of Dr Park's doctoral study completed at Durham. It adopts a clear anthropological perspective as it takes a reciprocity or gift-theory approach to rites conducted by elderly people before their death, especially in the production of hand-written copies of the Bibile in Korea, to rites associated with death, and with rites that follow later, all as part of a 'total social process'. It reveals the interaction of enduring Confucian traditions with those of Christianity in Korean religious history.