Dying to Live Living to Die: An Existential Paradox - The Existential Academy Online Conference
This conference invites a rigorous existential inquiry into the nature of death, not solely as an event marking the end of biological life, but as a central axis around which human meaning is constructed. From an existential perspective, death is not merely to be feared or denied; it is a fundamental condition that discloses the finitude of existence and the urgency of authentic living. Confronting death awakens individuals to their freedom, compelling them to assume responsibility for their choices in a world devoid of predetermined meaning. It is through this confrontation that one encounters the possibility of transformation—recognizing mortality as both a limit and a motivator in the pursuit of purposeful existence.
In addition to its existential framing, the conference will examine a broad spectrum of themes relating to death and dying. These include complex discussions on suicide and assisted dying, the psychological and philosophical implications of end-of-life care, and the enduring bonds that persist with the deceased. A particular focus will be placed on how the death of others shapes individual encounters with mortality. Furthermore, the programme will include anthropological perspectives on death rituals, as well as sociocultural analyses, with a specific lens on the Black community where historical trauma, systemic inequalities, and collective mourning intersect. Contributions will also explore how cultural narratives, and philosophical traditions inform our understanding of death and its meaning in the modern world.
Ultimately, this interdisciplinary gathering seeks not only to deepen theoretical understanding but to foster a more nuanced and critical engagement with mortality. By bridging existential philosophy with psychological, social, and cultural inquiry, the conference aims to illuminate the multifaceted ways death informs life. In doing so, it challenges participants to confront uncomfortable truths, reassess prevailing assumptions, and engage rigorously with one of the most fundamental dimensions of the human condition.
Course Content
Organisation
View recorded events hosted in collaboration with The Existential Academy
Presenter
Andrew Copson was appointed Chief Executive of Humanists UK in 2009, having previously been its Director of Education and Public Affairs. He is also the current President of Humanists International, a position he’s held since 2015. His books include The Little Book of Humanism (2020) and The Little Book of Humanist Weddings (2021) with Alice Roberts; Secularism: a very short introduction (Oxford University Press, 2019); The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Humanism (2015) with A C Grayling. His writing on humanist and secularist issues has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, The Times and New Statesman as well as in various journals.
He has represented the humanist movement extensively on television news on BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky, as well as on programmes such as Newsnight, The Daily Politics, and The Big Questions. He has also appeared on radio on programmes from Today, Sunday, The World at One, The Last Word, and Beyond Belief on the BBC, to local and national commercial radio stations.
Ania Capaldo is an accredited existential psychotherapist, trained at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling (NSPC), where she also lectures and completed her doctoral thesis on the lived experience of witnessing death of a close person. Death, bereavement, and end-of-life transitions are Ania’s primary areas of clinical and academic interest. She specialises in working with terminally ill patients and their families, and collaborates with hospices and grief charities to support clients facing complex loss.
Ania has gained broad clinical experience across various settings, including the NHS, before establishing her current practice in the private sector and at Dilemma Consultancy, where she offers therapy grounded in existential philosophy. In addition, Ania holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Mental Health Science and is a qualified EMDR therapist.
She is a full clinical member of the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), and a graduate member of the British Psychological Society (BPS).
Brigid Bowen is the founder and director of Compassionate Mental Health, a community interest company dedicated to transforming how we talk about and respond to “mental illness.” Rooted in lived experience and inspired by intentional and eco-communities, her work brings together people who might not otherwise meet outside a clinical encounter … building trust, understanding and hope for the future. With a background in journalism and external affairs, and a special interest in spirituality and health, Brigid has curated an international network and community of inquiry committed to transforming mental health services.
Robert works as a consultant in palliative medicine at Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital. He treats people with life-limiting illnesses with a focus on reducing their associated physical, psychological and existential suffering.
He also has an academic role at the School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge, where he teaches palliative care and clinical communication skills. He leads the Clinical School’s novel ‘Care of the Dying Patient’ simulation teaching programme and conducts research on providing effective end of life care training for future doctors.
Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, maintains an active consulting and coaching practice, and also directs the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, a “university without walls” for international online training in grief therapy. Neimeyer has published 30 books, including Routledge’s series on Techniques of Grief Therapy, and serves as Editor of Death Studies. The author of over 500 articles and chapters and a popular workshop presenter, he is currently working to advance a more adequate theory of grieving as a meaning-making process. In recognition of his contributions, he has been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by both the Association for Death Education and Counseling and the International Network on Personal Meaning.
The Existential Movement exists to reduce interpersonal conflict and psychological suffering and to enhance well-being in the community. It is a non-religious, non-political movement, using existential ideas derived from existential philosophy, psychotherapy, and psychology to achieve these aims. Its motto is to ‘bring wisdom to the world’.
The Existential Movement is composed of international members who wish to pursue the aims as the Existential Movement of enhancing emotional and spiritual health and well-being within the communities of each nation.
Find out more by clicking the website link under the logo.
Malcolm Stern has worked as a group and individual psychotherapist for more than 30 years. He was a co-founder of Alternatives at St James’s Church in London and runs groups internationally.
He is the author of Falling in Love / Staying in Love (Piatkus 2004) and Slay Your Dragons with Compassion ( Watkins 2020). He co-presented Channel 4’s relationship series, ‘Made for Each Other’ in 2003 and 2004 and sailed on the ‘Rainbow Warrior’ with Greenpeace in the 1980s. The book he is currently writing is an exploration of the shadow and its necessity in our evolutionary development.
Marcie is completing her research on the experiences of midlife women who make the decision to withdraw life support for their mothers following sudden, life-threatening health events, for a doctorate in Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling. Alongside her private practice, Marcie is the Suicide Prevention and Support Service Lead and acting clinical lead at Sussex Community Counselling, part of the Sussex Community Development Association. She has five years’ extensive experience working with first-generation women of colour and traumatically bereaved parents, partners, and families. Supporting others in navigating profound existential challenges after abuse, racism, trauma, and loss lies at the heart of her research and therapeutic work.
Nikki Jones is a mother bereaved by suicide, whose daughter Manon died age 16 while under the care of CAMHS in South Wales. After a 19-year management career with M&S and running her own business, she turned her focus to supporting her family’s mental health and advocating for change. Following Manon’s death, she served on the Welsh Senedd’s cross-party group for Suicide Prevention and later joined the John Lewis Partnership, where she was able to access trauma therapy that supported her recovery. Nikki now brings her lived experience, marketing training and compassionate leadership to raising awareness through the Manon Jones Foundation, calling for whole-family support during times of suicidal crisis.
Havi Carel is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol. She currently leads a Wellcome Discovery Award, EPIC, on epistemic injustice in health care. In 2020 she completed a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award, leading a five-year project, the Life of Breath. She was awarded the Health Humanities’ Inspiration Award 2018 for her work on the project.
Havi won the IJPS 2021 PERITIA Prize for her paper ‘When Institutional Opacity Meets Individual Vulnerability: Institutional Testimonial Injustice’ (co-authored with Ian Kidd), published in International Journal of Philosophical Studies. Her third monograph was published by Oxford University Press in 2016, entitled Phenomenology of Illness. Havi was voted by students as a ‘Best of Bristol’ lecturer in 2016 and was nominated for a teaching award three further times.
Havi is the author of Illness (3rd edition 2019), shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, and of Life and Death in Freud and Heidegger (2006). She is the co-editor of Health, Illness and Disease (2012) and of What Philosophy Is (2004). She uses film in teaching and has co-edited a volume entitled New Takes in Film-Philosophy (2010). She also co-edited a special issue of Philosophy on ‘Human Experience and Nature’ (2013).
She previously published on the embodied experience of illness, epistemic injustice in healthcare, vulnerability, wellbeing within illness, transformative experience, death, and on the experience of respiratory illness in the Lancet, BMJ, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Journal of Medical Ethics, Journal of Applied Philosophy, and in edited collections.
In 2009-11 Havi led an AHRC-funded project on the concepts of health, illness and disease. In 2011-12 she was awarded a Leverhulme Fellowship for a project entitled ‘The Lived Experience of Illness’. In 2012-13 she held a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship.
Website | https://epistemicinjusticeinhealthcare.org/ | www.lifeofbreath.org | http://bristol.academia.edu/HaviCarel | http://www.bristol.ac.uk/school-of-arts/people/havi-h-carel/index.html
Pro Chancellor at University of Wolverhampton ,Chair of Birmingham and Solihull NHS ICB and Independent, Chair of Walsall Together Health Partnership Board and Honorary Professor for Community leadership and heritage at Wolverhampton University. He was recently appointed Pro Chancellor at Wolverhampton University.
Patrick is a sought-after broadcaster, public speaker, EDI adviser and writes blogs and articles for the national and international media on healthcare, cultural heritage and race.
Patrick led the campaign for a national Windrush Day since 2013 and helping to expose the Windrush Scandal in 2018 in one of the first growing online petitions calling for an amnesty for the Windrush Generation. In 2020 Patrick was selected by British Vogue as of Britain’s top twenty campaigners and since he has been included in the Powerlist list of 100 influential Black People in Britain. In 2020 Patrick co-authored 100 Great Black Britons based on his campaign. In 2024 he his latest coauthored book on Black Grief and healing. Patrick is a member of Church Commissioners oversight group on reparations.
Emmy van Deurzen is a professor of Psychology and Psychotherapy with 18 books to her name, several of which have been translated into a dozen languages. She is the Co-Founder and Principal of the Existential Academy, where she also runs post graduate courses through the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling in partnership with Middlesex University and her private practice.
Born and raised in the Netherlands, she lived, studied, and worked in France before settling in the UK in 1977. Emmy has been instrumental in founding or cofounding numerous organizations, including the Society for Existential Analysis, the Federation for Existential Therapy in Europe and the World Confederation of Existential Therapy. She has helped people in facing their life problems and suffering for nearly half a century.
Amongst her books are the bestsellers Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling in Practice (3d edition 2012), Psychotherapy and the Quest for Happiness (Sage, 2009), Everyday Mysteries (2nd edition Routledge, 2010) and Paradox and Passion (2nd edition, Wiley, 2015). Her book Rising from Existential Crisis was published with PCCS books in 2021. She is currently writing a book on Existential Freedom for Penguin.
Rupert Callender is a pioneering radical undertaker and author of “What Remains: Life, Death and the Human Art of Undertaking.” Co-founder of The Green Funeral Company, he has spent over twenty years reimagining how we care for the dead – and for one another. His work restores agency, honesty and participation to families, inviting communities to shape their own rituals and find meaning in the shared work of grieving.
Shruti Jain is an experienced Existential Psychotherapist with a decade of practice specializing in individuals, couples, and family therapy. She has lived and worked across multiple countries, including Hong Kong, the USA, Singapore, India, and the UK, which has enriched her understanding of cultural diversity and equality. Shruti began her professional journey in London in 2015, volunteering at a rehab center and a multicultural therapy center, before deepening her expertise in Singapore through therapeutic interventions and NGO work.
Since returning to the UK in May 2021, she has focused on grief and loss, drawing from her personal experiences of losing both parents and navigating the impact of COVID-19. This journey has also led her to become a Death Doula. As a mother of two daughters, Shruti aims to share her insights on life and death with them, fostering comfort around these themes.
Shruti has an BSc in International Marketing and Psychology from The University of Texas at Dallas, a PGCert in Integrative Psychotherapy from Regents University and am currently pursuing Masters in Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling from NSPC. She has completed her Foundation in End of Life Doula training and is a member of the End of Life UK association.
