About this event
DOANLOAD THE CONFERENCE PROGRAMME – CLICK HERE
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.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Losing the Will to Live – Prof Emmy van Deurzen
As the world becomes increasingly engulfed by conflicts, threats and violence, many people feel despondent and frightened. During such dark days our capacity for endurance and resilience is severely tested. It is not at all surprising that more people lose the will to live. When dying seems a more desirable option than living, it is vital to reappraise our reasons for being as well as exploring our ideas of what might lie beyond death. This is where we need to draw on the wisdom that humankind has accumulated over the millennia, as well as referring to the most up to date research data to gain greater understanding. In this talk we shall aim to do both these things, so that participants may feel inspired to revisit and make more sense of their own experiences.
Prof Emmy van Deurzen
Emmy van Deurzen is a philosopher, psychologist and existential therapist who is the author of twenty books, translated into 26 languages. She is an international speaker and has founded and co-founded numerous training and professional organizations. She is President of the worldwide Existential Movement, and a visiting professor with Middlesex University. Her YouTube channel @ExistentialZone offers 1000+videos on how to live a more meaningful life as well as a weekly Live Chat.
______________________________
Meaning-Focused Grief Therapy: Principles and Practices – Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD
Loss—of people, places, projects and possibilities—is endemic to the human condition, and in this sense, living in its shadow is an existential given, a cultural universal. Grief in the aftermath of bereavement, on the other hand, varies as a function of who we are, who we lose, and how we lose them. Viewed through the lens of a meaning-focused grief therapy, we will briefly consider the role of trauma-informed work to promote integration of the story of the loss and its implications for our world view, attachment-informed interventions to reconstruct the continuing bond with the deceased, and a resilience-informed approach to revising our sense of identity as we move forward in life.
We will briefly summarize research that highlights the role of the search for sense and significance in addressing the challenges of each domain, as we then consider the process markers that call for particular therapeutic approaches, illustrating these with actual client interactions in therapy. The goal will be to provide participants with a suggestive frame for approaching grieving as a process of reaffirming or reconstructing a world of meaning in the wake of loss, as well as conveying something of the style of intervention that is coherent with this approach.
Learning Objectives:
- Summarize the essential domains of a Meaning Reconstruction model of grief and outline how it can serve as a guidance-system for grief therapy
- Identify Restorative Retelling procedures for mastering the story of the loss
- Describe procedures for realigning the continuing bond with the deceased in a way that addresses unfinished business and reinforces secure attachment
- Discuss the role of identity change in the context of bereavement and the prospects for growth
Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD
Dr. Robert A. Neimeyer is a luminary in the field of psychology, particularly in the areas of death, grief, and loss. As Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Memphis, Dr. Neimeyer’s contributions to research and practice have been nothing short of transformative. With 37 books and over 600 articles to his name, he has been included in Stanford University/Elsevier’s list of the Top 2% of Scientists in the world for advancing our understanding of grieving as a meaning-making process and its profound implications for human experience. Dr. Neimeyer’s dedication to education is evident in his role as the Director of the Portland Institute for Loss and Transition, where he continues to mentor and inspire future generations of grief therapists. His leadership in the field has also found expression in his service as President of the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) and Chair of the International Work Group on Death, Dying and Bereavement (AWG). His accolades, including multiple awards from ADEC, the International Network of Personal Meaning, the Viktor Frankl Association, and the American Psychological Association among others, attest to the sustained impact of his work on the field. Today, we are privileged to benefit from Dr. Neimeyer’s wisdom as he shares his expertise with us.
______________________________
——*Session not taking place due to unforeseen circumstances* ——
Navigating Loss & Embracing Life – Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell
In this 45-minute interactive workshop, Dr. Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell guides participants through a reflective and practical exploration of loss and grief, grounded in existential counselling psychology. Based on her therapeutic work and her book The Loss Prescription, this session offers a compassionate space to engage with the human experience of grief not as a problem to fix, but as a meaningful, transformative process.
Participants will explore how grief can provoke existential questions about identity, purpose, connection, and the future—and how, through conscious awareness and self-compassion, it is possible to rebuild a life with renewed meaning.
Learning Objective:
- Understand grief as a natural, existential process that impacts all dimensions of life.
- Explore how meaning, identity, and purpose are challenged—and reshaped—by loss.
- Learn practical tools from The Loss Prescription to support personal reflection and growth.
- Cultivate self-compassion and emotional regulation when navigating grief.
- Gain confidence to support themselves or others through the ambiguity and pain of loss.
Who is This Workshop Appropriate For?
- This workshop is ideal for anyone processing personal loss or supporting others through it—therapists, wellbeing leads, HR professionals, or anyone seeking a deeper understanding of grief and resilience.
What to Expect:
- A safe, reflective atmosphere
- Brief psychoeducation around existential psychology and grief
- Use of “The 4 Pillars of Grief Recovery” from The Loss Prescription (emotional, physical, social, and spiritual wellbeing)
- Tools and questions to carry forward for continued personal growth
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell
Dr Chloe Paidoussis Mitchell, is a Chartered Counselling Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and Lecturer at The Existential Academy, whose work is deeply rooted in existential counselling and practice. Author of The Loss Prescription: A Practical Roadmap to Grief Recovery (HarperCollins, March 14, 2024), she combines clinical depth with philosophical insight to support individuals facing profound loss.
In her private practice, she helps clients engage with grief not merely as a condition to be overcome but as an existential journey—one that challenges beliefs about meaning, identity, mortality, and time . As a lecturer at the Existential Academy and the New School of Psychotherapy & Counselling, Dr Chloe brings integrative, trauma-informed, and humanistic approaches to therapy.
In The Loss Prescription, she offers accessible, reflective tools that blend self-compassion with existential exploration, guiding readers to reconstruct well‑being holistically—emotionally, socially, physically, spiritually—after loss.
______________________________
Dying from Natural Causes: The Original and Still the Worst? – Dr Robert Brodrick
R. D. Laing observed that “Life is a sexually transmitted disease and there’s a 100% mortality rate”.
Given our shared prognosis, we have three options: suicide, assisted dying or letting nature take its course. Many choose the default option of letting the body wear out and fail on its own inevitable yet uncertain timeline.
Can the traditional mode dying be meaningful, even when it is miserable? Is there anything we can do to increase the likelihood of a good death?
Dr Robert Brodrick
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.
______________________________
Should I Fear My Death? Epicurus vs Heidegger on Annihilation – Prof Havi Carel
In this talk I will examine two approaches to death. The first, that of Epicurus, claims that ‘death is nothing to us.’ The second, opposed view, of Martin Heidegger, sees death as the most significant structuring element of human life. Which account should we favour and why? After discussing this I will offer an account of human life as characterised by vulnerability, putting death into context. I will suggest that death is a significant, but not the only, form of human vulnerability.
Prof Havi Carel
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
______________________________
Are We All Living a Social Death? – Prof Patrick Vernon
This presentation explores the enduring condition of social death through the intersecting lenses of Afro-Pessimism, existential psychotherapy, and the Rastafari-rooted concept of sufferation. Drawing on Orlando Patterson’s foundational theory and extended through thinkers like Frank Wilderson III, it examines how Black existence has been historically positioned as non-being—excluded from full social, legal, and ontological recognition.
Sufferation, as expressed in the music and poetics of Bob Marley, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and others, names not only inherited trauma, but an indomitable will to resist. This cultural tradition made “the sufferers visible” in post-Windrush Britain, turning pain into public memory and political testimony.
Through the lens of existential therapy, the talk repositions therapy not as a tool of assimilation but as a space of witnessing, relational presence, and meaning-making. It calls on mental health practitioners to confront colonial structures within clinical practice and to stand with clients in their search for agency, authenticity, and existential freedom.
Prof Patrick Vernon
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.
______________________________
A Case of Choice, Not Dignity: Current Debates on Assisted Dying – Andrew Copson
Assisted dying is now legal in some parts of the British Isles and in all parts is moving closer. Humanists UK has been advocating for this for over ninety years. Their Chief Executive Andrew Copson will speak about the values that underpin these debates and how choice has been neglected in the UK.
Andrew Copson
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.
______________________________
Gathering After Loss: Ritual, Community and Renewal – Hosted by Brigid Bowen, Compassionate Mental Health – With Malcolm Stern, Nikki Jones & Rupert Callender
When someone dies – especially through suicide – our hearts and communities are broken open. How do we make space for both the sorrow and the love that remains? This conversation explores how we can come together after loss: to share our stories, make meaning from what feels unbearable, and rediscover ways to stay connected. The 45-minute live conversation focuses on what helps: the relational, symbolic and practical acts that sustain us when meaning is lost, and the quiet renewal that can emerge when we hold grief together.
Malcolm offers lived-professional insight into suicide bereavement and other complex grief, and what gets people through the first months and beyond. He shares what supportive groups can hold, including practical do’s and don’ts, and how circles of care can carry unbearable stories without collapsing. He also reflects on how a well-held group supported him through the death of his daughter.
Rupert, pioneering green undertaker and author of “What Remains: Life, Death and the Human Art of Undertaking”, shares how families can be empowered to be the funeral directors of their own rituals. And how simple, compassionate choices can restore agency, create meaning, and widen the circles of care. From carrying a coffin, to confronting the reality of death, Rupert reflects on loss and grief, and the transformative power of participatory funerals and communal meaning-making.
Nikki brings an extraordinary courage and generosity of heart. After her 16-year-old Manon daughter died by suicide on a psychiatric ward, she chose to open her grief to others – inviting family, friends and community to walk alongside her. Through creativity, connection and shared ritual, she found a way to stay connected despite living with traumatic grief and loss. Nikki’s story shows how compassion and community can transform the landscape of grief, making space for meaning, care and renewal to grow.
Together, these perspectives offer practical ways to:
- Find your people and gather a circle of support
- Shape rituals that honour the person and sustain the living
- Navigate resources for post-vention, signposting, and ongoing care
- Hold complexity with compassion, courage, and a steady, relational presence
- Format and flow: A tightly held 45 minutes co-hosted by Brigid and Malcolm for coherence and care.
What you will learn:
- How to build and hold a supportive circle after grief and loss
- Ways to strengthen and nurture networks of support
- How to be Radical and creative ways to process grief
- Ways to locate and mobilise community resources and signposting
- Ground rules: what helps, what harms, and how to stay connected over time
______________________________
STUDENT PANEL
A Reflection on the Experience of Witnessing the Death of Someone Close – Ania Capaldo
In her research, Ania Capaldo explores the lived experience of witnessing the death of a close person; what it is like to be physically and emotionally present as someone we love takes their final breaths. Shifting the focus from grief after loss to the immediacy of presence during dying, her study highlights a largely overlooked psychological event with profound existential significance. She argues that witnessing death is not synonymous with bereavement, though intertwined with it, and calls for a more nuanced therapeutic approach that recognises its unique impact and supports individuals who have accompanied someone at the threshold of death.
The findings reveal how this experience can trigger profound existential shifts, affecting all four dimensions of existence: physical, social, personal, and spiritual, as well as one’s perception of time.
______________________________
The Grief, Death & Dying Toolbox: The Experiential Journey of Loss Through Death to Being a Death Doula – Shruti Jain
Shruti will present on her experiential journey of losing both her parents within a span of three years, experiencing Covid alongside the rest of the world, and how she accidentally started her journey in grief, death and dying. This journey, that started with losing her mom in 2018 ended with the passing of her father in April 2021, led her to not only finding comfort with death and the dying, but also led her to becoming a Death Doula.
________________________
Labouring With the Decision to Let Go: The existential voyage of midlife daughters in withdrawing life support for their mothers – Marcie Boyer
In sudden, catastrophic health events that leave patients incapacitated, it is unknowable whether the patient themselves experiences uncertainty. This raises a profound question: Who, then, carries the burden of confronting existential uncertainty? This workshop delves into the experiences of midlife women who accept the immense existential responsibility of deciding to withdraw life support for their mothers.
Drawing from her research and personal experiences, Marcie explores questions such as: What is it like for daughters across the physical, social, personal, and spiritual dimensions of existence? How do they reconcile existential concerns for their mothers with their own inner turmoil? And what deeper meanings might emerge after choosing to end the life of the person who gave them life? This session offers an intimate glimpse into the often hidden emotional and existential voyage faced by those who labour with the decision to let go.
________________________
TICKETS
Choose your ticket price. Each ticket provides access to the LIVE event on Zoom & the conference Recording. Choose the fee that works for you.
CPD CERTIFICATE
After attending the LIVE conference, your CPD certificate will be emailed to you.
If you watch the event on catch-up, you can download your certificate from the Onlinevents CPD Library.
RECORDING
This conference will be recorded and the recordings are included in the live admission tickets. This will be useful for colleagues who are not able to attend the event live and also for those who attend the event live and want to watch it again.
ZOOM
This workshop will be hosted on the Zoom meeting platform where we will use our cameras and microphones to interact with each other as a group.
___________________________
At Onlinevents, we and the presenters we collaborate with are committed to working in a way that aligns with the ethical codes and frameworks of our respective professional organisations. We expect all colleagues attending our events to uphold the ethical principles of their professional membership.
If you are not a member of a professional organisation, we ask that you participate in a way that is both authentic and respectful, fostering a space of mutual learning and professional engagement.
By registering for this event, you agree to be present and interact in a manner that reflects these principles.
Curious about the Existential movement? Discover more HERE
________________________
