Current Projects
Conference: Death, Dying and Disposal (DDD9 and DDD10)
The ninth meeting of the Death Dying and Disposal Conference (DDD9) was hosted by the Centre at Durham September 9th - 12th 2009 with approximetaly 200 delegates, forty percent of them from outside the UK. The Book of Abstracts edited by Douglas J. Davies and James Jirtle is published as Volume 14 Supplement to the journal Mortality September 2009. A book of selected papers on the topic of Emotions, Death and Identity is to be published in 2011.
The Tenth DDD Conference was held in September 9th-11th 2011 at The Centre for Thanatology Radbout University Nijmegen. It included the showing of the film Earth to Earth: Natural Burial and The Church of England . Both of these spoke to the film which was given a second showing by popular request. Members of the Centre's Cremation in Scotland team (see below) also made a significant contribution to this conference by presenting a panel on this Leverhulme funded project.
Film
During late 2010 the Centre commissioned a film on its woodland burial project. Funded both by the Centre and Durham University's Wolfson Research Institute this film Earth to Earth: Natural Burial and The Church of England was made by a former Durham University graduate Sarah Thomas, now an ethnographic film-maker. This has been shown at a variety of public events, including the 2011 Open Day at Barton Glebe Woodland Burial site, with many of the people appearing in the film being present at the day. It has alos been selected for inclusion in a variety of film festivals including, for example, Turin and Cambridge, and has been shown at academic seminars in Helsinki and Nijmegen, as well as at training days for clergy at St George's House Windsor Castle and Cuddesdon Theological College.
Woodland Burial
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council's Religion and Society programme this Collaborative Doctoral Award focused on developments in woodland burial in general with a special focus of The Arbory Trust and its Barton Glebe site near Cambridgeshire. The Project ran for three years from October 2007 -2010 with Ms Hannah Rumble, B.A., M.A (Distinction) as the primary researcher. She successfully completed her doctoral examination in December 2010. Her thesis is accessible through Durham University Library.
Part of this research, along with furether research and analysis will be published in 2012 in a joint volume with Prof. Douglas Davies dealing with woodland burial and other aspects of contemporary funeral rites in Britain. For more information, email h.j.rumble@durham.ac.uk
See also the previous note on the DDD Conferences.
Cremation in Scotland
The Cremation in Scotland Project is now drawing to its close and a major book on the material is currently being preapred for publication. Members of the project team have given numerous papers in UK, France, and Romania over the last year, they also made a significant contribution to the DDD10 Conference at Nijmegen.Funded by the Leverhulme Trust this three year project (2008-2011) is strongly interdisciplinary. Led by Professor Davies and Prof. Hilary Grainger (University of the Arts, London) the research team includes the Revd Dr Peter Jupp and Mr. Stephen White as Research Fellows and Mr Gordon Raeburn who is working for his doctorate. Together the team has been exploring the social and religious history of Scotland as the medium within which cremation emerged. Prof. Grainger has a special interest in the architectural history of Scotland's crematoria, Mr White in legal aspects of cremation and burial, Mr Raeburn in the theology of death in Scotland at and after the Reformation, Dr Jupp in the historical dynamics of the process of funerary change, and Prof Davies in its ritual and symbolic aspects and in the interdisciplinary nature of the project itself.
Death and British Funerals
Funded by the ecumenical, Churches Group for Funerals, Profs Douglas Davies and Prof. Tony Walter (of Bath University's Centre for Death and Society CDAS) completed and presented to that Group in summer 2008 a preliminary report on contemporary aspects of death and funerary rites in England and Wales.
Research leave
In summer term 2011 Prof. Davies was given research leave held as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Collegium Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki. There he continued work on the joint volume with Dr Hannah Rumbe on woodland burial and contemporary funeral rites in the UK, to be published by Continuum in 2012. He took part in a variety of research seminars and also showed the film Earth to Earth: Woodland Burial and The Church of England to the Scandinavian Thanatological Association, Helsinki University's Department of Anthropology, and to a local Helsinki circle of interested parties. He was able to meet leading figures in Finland's palliative care world. In November 2011 Prof davies will return to give a plenary lecture at a conference hosted by the Collegium as part of its ongoing programme on death studies.
Patristics Research Seminar
Seminars are usually held on Thursday at 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House, but you should check the seminar details for exceptions.
Where Does the Trinity Appear?: Augustine’s Apologetics and ‘Philosophical’ Readings of the De Trinitate
28 March 2013 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
Athanasius of Alexandria as a Pastoral Father
13 March 2013 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
Can Contemporary Theology be Patristic?
28 February 2013 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
The Tura 'Commentaries', Didymus’ On the Holy Spirit and Pseudo-Basil, Against Eunomius IV-V: Some Significant Points of Doctrinal Convergence
21 February 2013 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
‘A Delight to the Eyes’ Sense Perception, Desire and Temptation in Three Patristic Readings of the Fall
7 February 2013 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
The Problematic Second Century
31 January 2013 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
Diatesseron, A Misnomer? The Evidence of Ephrem’s Commentary
24 January 2013 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
The Great Pretender: Reading Jerome’s letters to Augustine
17 January 2013 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
The Doctrine of Providence in Late Antiquity
17 March 2011 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
De vera religione 12.24: A Key to Augustine’s Early Account of Ascent
10 March 2011 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
'Cuius...eloquia strenue ministrabant...populo tuo': The Late Antique Episcopacy and Cicero’s Ideal Orator
3 March 2011 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
The Reception of The Fathers in Byzantium 650-1080
24 February 2011 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
’Playing with allegories’: Liturgical Interpretation
17 February 2011 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
Eugippius had his reasons. The authority of ignorance on the origin of the soul in the Excerpta ex operibus Sancti Augustini (6th c.)
10 February 2011 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
The Place of Scripture in the Divine Economy according to Cyril of Alexandria
3 February 2011 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
Catching Up: Roman History and Jewish Scripture in City of God 18
27 January 2011 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House
Title TBC
18 March 2010 16:15 in Seminar Room B
The Grammarian and the Rise of Christian Exegesis
11 March 2010 16:15 in Seminar Room B
Acting, ceremonial, liturgy: Neglected aspects of Church Councils?
4 March 2010 16:15 in Seminar Room B
'State of Angels, Progress of Eternity': The rhetoric of angelic life in The Ladder of Divine Ascent; Gentiles, Jews, Christians and Sacraments in Augustine's De doctrina Christiana
25 February 2010 16:15 in Seminar Room B
Freedom to Roam(ans): Origens Defense of the Will in Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans
18 February 2010 16:15 in Seminar Room B
Anatomy of a Miracle: the Feast of the Transfiguration
11 February 2010 16:15 in Seminar Room B
In the Beginning: Irenaeus, Creation, and the Environment
4 February 2010 16:15 in Seminar Room B
Cassian's Ascetic Pneumatology
28 January 2010 16:15 in Seminar Room B
The Holy Spirit as the Undiminished Giver: Didymus the Blind's De Spiritu Sancto and the Development of Nicene Pneumatology
15 October 2009 16:15 in Seminar Room C
Mind and Heart in Christian East and West
4 December 2008 16:15 in Seminar Room C
Readings from Clement of Alexandria from Whitacre’s Patristic Greek Reader
27 November 2008 16:15 in Seminar Room C
Readings from Clement of Alexandria from Whitacre’s Patristic Greek Reader
20 November 2008 16:15 in Seminar Room C
Towards a Canonical Reading of the Byzantine Funeral Liturgy: Its History, Development, and Coherence
13 November 2008 16:15 in Seminar Room C
Moses as Exemplar among Early Christian Readers
6 November 2008 16:15 in Seminar Room C
The Spirit of Life: Pneumatology and Deification in St Irenaeus and his Predecessors
30 October 2008 16:15 in Seminar Room C
Naming God
23 October 2008 16:15 in Seminar Room C
Inspirational Portraits: Augustine’s Depiction of Perpetua and Felicitas
1 March 2007 16:15 in Seminar Room C, Abbey House