Ben White (Queensland University of Technology): Patient access to voluntary assisted dying: a qualitative study of caregivers’ perceptions of barriers and facilitators

This presentation draws on qualitative interviews with family members of patients who sought access to voluntary assisted dying in Victoria, Australia. It identifies key barriers and facilitators for patients wishing to seek an assisted death. Findings have implications for system design in Victoria and other Australian voluntary assisted dying schemes.

Casey Haining (Queensland University of Technology): Voluntary assisted dying in Western Australia: early reflections

Voluntary assisted dying has been lawful in Western Australia since July 2021. Reporting on the results of a qualitative pilot study with patients, families, health practitioners and regulators, this presentation will reflect on the early experiences and key learnings from the early phases of voluntary assisted dying in Western Australia.

Ruthie Jeanneret (Queensland University of Technology): Supporting a loved one through a voluntary assisted death: A trigger for regulatory action

Reporting on the results of qualitative interviews with family members in Victoria, Australia, this presentation discusses the ways in which family members who supported a loved one through a voluntary assisted death were prompted to become “regulatory actors”, including by sharing their story or advocating for change.

Lindy Willmott (Queensland University of Technology): Experience of grief for loved ones after a voluntary assisted death: A qualitative study

Voluntary assisted dying was legalised in Victoria in June 2017 and commenced operation in June 2019. This presentation reports on the grief experience of family members whose loved one sought to die under the new voluntary assisted dying regime.

Madeleine Archer (Queensland University of Technology): Comparative reflections from the Belgian model of assisted death

The Australian voluntary assisted dying model is not universal, and wider consideration should be had to other approaches. Whilst Belgian and Australian assisted dying legal frameworks are broadly similar, legislative and practical divergences have manifested in distinct experiences and care trajectories for patients seeking access to an assisted death.

Chair: Simon Wong (Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust)

Participants: Fraser Allison (University of Melbourne), Priscilla Hough-Davies (Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust), Adrian Compton-Cook (Nature Research), Isabel Zhang (Bastion Insights), Cale Donovan (Bare)

The complexity of choices and decision-making in Deathcare has increased markedly as Australian society sees changes to social connections, demography and digital innovation. What are the major trends impacting consumer and community choices, and how are different organisations responding to this? This session will present research from three different organisations as they tackle these trends from different sector viewpoints.

Susannah Goddard (The Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust): Creating a new way to enjoy cemeteries – the Discover Cemeteries App

Discover Cemeteries is an app which tells the stories of some of those interred at Fawkner Memorial Park through activations at the cemetery using augmented reality, live action, and animation. The presentation will cover technology development, creative production and outline how GMCT integrated this app into the site.

Martin Jackson (PlotBox): More than mapping - powering cemeteries using spatial information

Cemetery data enriched by geographical information systems significantly improve customer experience and create operational efficiencies. Overlaying spatial information, including interactive survey-grade maps, high-resolution aerial imagery, augmented reality, and 3D walk-throughs provides immersive geospatial experiences that help customers better understand cemetery spaces and allow cemetery managers to make more informed decisions.

Sam Loy: Using audio to engage, educate and eulogise

Podcasts are the fastest growing media around, with organisations also producing audio to enhance their community engagement. This presentation will outline the potential for cemeteries and deathcare providers in using audio to engage community and memorialise the interred, covering current geo-locative technology and the benefits of audio-only products.

Sonia Vachalec (ModUrn Group Pty Ltd): Transforming the traditional memorial experience

ModUrn develops technology to capture and amplify stories by connecting generations through storytelling, recorded memories and contemporary design. From Smart Urns and Plaques incorporating Bluetooth Beacon technology to White Label - Software as a Service activating Cemeteries and Legacy Forests, ModUrn’s Innovative Memorial Products are positioned to intersect life and death and transform the traditional memorial experience.

Chair: Hannah Gould (University of Melbourne)

Participants: Tamara Kohn (University of Melbourne), Michael Arnold (University of Melbourne), Alex Broom (University of Sydney).

This participatory workshop brings into conversation scholars from diverse disciplines to discuss how we might define and comprehensively study the concept of a ‘good death’ within contemporary Australia, with consideration for the operationalisation of this standard within healthcare and industry settings. Responding to the absence of high-quality, holistic, and national-level research into Australian death, participants will collaboratively develop a research design to address the history, demographic diversity, and institutional and legislative context of contemporary Australia.

Mark Howard (Monash University)

Dr. Howard is a bioethicist and political philosopher investigating the impacts of emerging technologies, especially automating, in healthcare. He will share insights from his ongoing research on the use of machine learning in personalising treatment planning and on reconciling prognostication disagreements between clinicians and algorithmic systems in emergency medicine.

Zongyuan Ge (Monash University)

Prof. Ge specialises in statistics, machine learning, and computer vision. He has developed AI health products for cancer and eye disease screening. He will reflect on computational challenges in the integration of several types of medical data for prognosticating diseases and on the impact of AI-guided prognosis on end-of-life care.

Brett Scholz (ANU)

Dr. Scholz’s research focuses on making health services more equitable by encouraging consumer leadership. He has published a systematic review on clinicians’ perspectives of communication in end-of-life care. He will contribute to discussions on how diverse consumer voices should be integrated in the development of bio/digital technologies for end-of-life care.

Imogen Mitchell (ANU)

Prof. Mitchell is an intensive care specialist whose research aims to improve end-of-life care in acute hospitals. Her retrospective study on Australian in-hospital deaths reveals that only 12% of patients have existing advance care plans. She will reflect on challenges in integrating novel technologies in end-of-life care in hospital settings.

Sujatha Raman (ANU)

Prof. Raman is a social studies of science and responsible innovation scholar, whose current work explores how to align science, technology, and innovation with the public good. She will draw from her extensive experience in examining novel technologies to underscore critical societal considerations in developing bio-techno-modalities for end-of-life care.

Joan Leach (ANU)

Prof. Leach’s research centres on knowledge movement across science and society, science communication, and public engagement. She will discuss engagement opportunities and challenges between the public and developers of precision health technologies for end-of-life care, reflecting on how these modalities can impact perceptions on and cultures of death and dying.

This roundtable explores the process and challenges of formalising standards for quality and safety within the Australian deathcare sector.

Adrian Barrett (AFDA National President)

Lynne Gallucci (Executive General Manager for Australian Funerals, Invocare)

Lauren Hardgrove (Vice President, Australasian Cemeteries & Crematoria Association)

Tom Williams (NSW Branch Organiser, AWU)

Joe Sehee (Executive Director, Social Health Australia)

Chair: Ross G Menzies (University of Technology Sydney)

Participants: Vida Ivan (Southern Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust), Freia Lily (Community Palliative Care), Rebecca Lyons (You n' Taboo, Solace End of Life Services)

This panel discussion will explore contemporary solutions to a range of issues that inevitably arise in deathcare. The panel will examine, among other things, innovative approaches to trauma and grief, the role of cemeteries in our communities, the parentification of children during the dying process, and the value of death acceptance. The discussion will cover insights from a range of diverse practices and disciplines including psychology, sociology, social work, philosophy, palliative care and cemetery management.

Heather Conway (School of Law at Queen's University Belfast): The Chicken or the Egg? : Legalising New Bodily Disposal Methods

Driven by a combination of increased consumer choice and being more environmentally friendly on death, new methods of bodily disposal such as alkaline hydrolysis and human composting are raising a host of complex issues. This paper explores how and why countries/states are legalising these methods; the scrutiny this attracts; what legalisation presupposes (in terms of societal acceptance and viability); and whether the legal architecture is promotes social acceptance of these new methods or simply reflecting it.

Georgina Robinson (University of Durham): Sustainable Deathstyles: Alkaline Hydrolysis in the United Kingdom

Drawing comparison with international adoption of alkaline hydrolysis, Robinson’s PhD questions whether the British public, secular-religious institutions, and funeral industry will accept AH as a new funerary form. This paper explores whether, as the global climate crisis evolves, increasingly sustainable lifestyles will transform British deathstyles, prompting change in choice of funeral.

Kate Falconer (University of Queensland): When is a body not a body? Cryopreservation and the non-disposal of the deceased’s remains

Recent decades have seen increased interest in cryopreservation – the preservation of the deceased’s body at temperatures well below freezing until a time when ‘reanimation’ is possible – with facilities in Russia, the US, and now, Australia. But any uptake in cryopreservation will have huge implications, both socially, legally, and ecologically.

Philip Olson (Department of Science and Technology Studies, Virginia Tech University): Necrowaste and the Green Machine

What is the future of necrowaste in environmental policy and politics?

John Troyer (Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath): Future Dead Disposal Technologies and how everything old is new again

Dead bodies are somehow always new so human disposal technologies for these dead bodies will simultaneously produce both moral panics and saviour complexes. In this way, debates around the final disposition of human remains eternally returns to the shock of the old being new again. Again.

Urszula Tataj-Puzyna (Center of Postgraduate Medical Education, Warsaw): Encounters and farewells: labour and birth after lethal foetal diagnosis

Childbirth of a baby who dies at the same time is a challenge. I will tell you about the experiences of parents who are waiting for a meeting with a child that will also be a goodbye. Staff attitudes and the way they communicate with parents can be a great resource or increase loss.

Tina Braun (University of Bern) Drafting new imaginaries for palliative care through design ethnography

My practice-led dissertation within the perspective design/visual communication of the research project “Settings of Dying” (SNSF, 2020-2023) focuses on visual communication within palliative care institutions, and how the topic of dying is institutionally represented and reflected in different communication materials of palliative care institution and hospices.

Michael Erard (Maastricht University): A linguistic lens on language at the end of life

What can language at the end of life tell us about language? In this talk, I outline a linguistics of last words, both unscripted and ritual-based ones, which reveals (among other things) obsolete, potentially constraining ideas about the necessity of the dying person as a language producer/communicator.

Chair: Hannah Gould (The University of Melbourne)

Participants: Jenny Schwarz (Aged Care, University of Melbourne), Rebecca Lush (University of Queensland Integrated Pathology Learning Centre.

Healthcare systems and medicine’s professional culture have been described as ‘death phobic’, with death too often viewed as a ‘failure’. This framing has significant psychological impacts for families and clinicians alike. What is the current position of end-of-life and death care within Australia’s medical education programs? How might we better teach death and dying to medical professionals? On this roundtable, educators, physicians, and students discuss their experiences and dreams for a better system of death education.

Chair: Kate Woodthorpe (Centre for Death and Society, Bath University)

Participants: Ruth Toulson (MICA), Stass Jones (The Last Hurrah Funeral Home), Stephanie Longmuir (Celebrant), Kate Woodthorpe (Bath University)

This panel will explore global funeral trends, before inviting the audience to share their views on change within their own country or continent. It promises to be a lively comparative discussion between presenters and the audience that brings together an international community interested in present and future funeral practice.

Dr Marc Trabsky, La Trobe University (Chair)

Marc is a Senior Research Fellow at La Trobe Law School, and an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow on a project titled ‘Socio-Legal Implications of Virtual Autopsies in Coronial Investigations’. He has published the award-winning Law and the Dead: Technology, Relations and Institutions (Routledge, 2019).

Professor David Ranson, Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine

David is the Deputy Director of the Forensic Sciences Division at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, an Adjunct Clinical Professor in the Department of Forensic Medicine, Monash University and an Adjunct Professor of La Trobe Law School, La Trobe University.

Professor Belinda Carpenter, QUT

Belinda is a Professor in the School of Justice at QUT. She was previously the Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Law. She has research interests in sex crimes and death investigations, and she has gained two ARC Linkage grants and an ARC Discovery Project grant on coronial investigations.

Dr Rebecca Scott Bray, University of Sydney

Rebecca is Associate Professor, Criminology and Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Sydney. She works at the intersection of law, criminology and death studies, with an abiding focus on issues around death and the dead, including death investigation, and death-related art and media. She was Director, Sydney Institute of Criminology, 2012-2016.

Dr Natalie Maystorovich Chulio, University of Sydney

Natalia was awarded her PhD in 2019. She is currently an honorary research fellow and lecturer with the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Sydney. Her research interests include history, archaeology, international law, transitional justice, mass grave exhumations and medico-legal forensics, dead body politics, victimology, justice and human rights.

Sam Bagnato (GMCT) — How streaming solutions provide a new connection to families and what it means for the future of funeral services

Digital solutions are evolving in a rapid and innovative way. Covid presented opportunities to evolve our deep connection to our customers and increase our digital presence and connection to families. We want to bridge the gap between customer and user experience through emerging technologies that provide moments that matter.

Samantha Teichman (Simon Fraser University) — Good (Virtual) Grief: The Potential of Online Communities for Bereaved Older Adults During COVID-19

During COVID-19, older adults have been at risk for heightened social isolation and bereavement overload. However, online engagement can facilitate meaningful social connections. This presentation explores what it means to process grief in a virtual space and the benefits of engaging in meaning-making, community building, and griefwork in later life.

Gaudenz Urs Metzger (Zurich University of the Arts) — Between Individuality and Belonging: Mediated Dying in the Digital Age

This paper explores the encounter of digital culture and the romantic spirit in current Western approaches to death. The presentation extends the discussion of digital media’s role in shaping the experience of dying and its attached emotions by highlighting how dying behaviour incorporates values from apparently opposed cultural traditions.

Sarah Kaur (Portable) — Engaging individuals in participatory research and design processes to build a digital resource to help connect communities to end of life services

Portable engaged with individuals from culturally and linguistically diverse communities to understand their current experiences, challenges, and hopes for online resources to help them navigate available options for end of life care services. This talk presents their voices and recommendations on creating culturally-appropriate digital resources for end-of-life and deathcare planning.

Katy McHugh (University of Queensland) — Social media and technology mediated grief in the context of COVID-19

Katy’s research focuses on the conversations about death and how they have been impacted by social media in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Katy will discuss the emerging themes of her first stage interviews, which will inform the second stage of her PhD in developing thanato-sensitive designs.

Bronte Price (he/him) is a cis gay man who spent the first 42 years of his life as a straight man before coming out. Supported by a career as a former senior bureaucrat, Bronte is a funeral celebrant and a qualified trainer. In 2016, he established The Equality Network, through which he conducts training in LGBTIQ+ inclusion. Deathcare for the LGBTIQ+ community is a particular passion of his. Bronte is the Chair of this panel session.

Hini Hanara (they/them) hails from New Zealand. They're an indigenous, non-binary person of colour who was raised within a strong Christian home. They're a hospitality professional and creative event producer who is keen to see greater diversity within the end-of-life services. Hini identifies as gender diverse and is a strong advocate for the needs of transgender folks in maintaining their dignity and identity within death.

Andy Fernie (he/him) is a cis bisexual man who is the Founder of independent funeral company, Become Funerals. He’s especially passionate about grief and spirituality within the LGBTIQ+ community and how we can do things better in this space. Andy is committed to making his company’s funeral services and after-death services environmentally sustainable.

Fran Webber (she/her) commenced working with Tobin Brothers Funerals (also incorporating Frances Tobin Funerals by Women) in 1995. Tobin Brothers Funerals is a family owned company committed to assisting our clients to create meaningful, personalised funerals. Fran identifies as a lesbian, gay woman, or queer. Fran has always been open about her sexuality while working at Tobin Brothers, who employ other members of the LGBTIQ+ community. Fran considers it a privilege when able to assist members of the LGBTIQ+ community, either the deceased or family/friends.

Dr Annetta Mallon (she/her) is an end-of-life consultant, doula, educator, social researcher and specialist grief, loss, and trauma recovery psychotherapist. Annetta is based in Tasmania, but her work and research takes place around the country and internationally. Annetta is a diversity-welcoming, inclusive, secular practitioner for both people and pets, is kink-friendly, and is a long-standing ally of LGBTIQA+ communities.

Alex Antunes (she/her) is a queer freelance Aged Care Personal Care Attendant and Disability Support Worker providing home support. A trained Funeral Celebrant and musician, Alex is on the stakeholder engagement team for Harkness Cemetery, a massive greenfield site currently being master-planned on the edge of Melbourne, and is passionate about inclusive end-of-life care, funeral options and rituals that empower communities.

Chair: Samuel Holleran (The University of Melbourne)

Participants: Hayley West (Castlemaine Cemetery Trust), Mariske Westerndorp (Utrecht University), Hamish Coates (Manager Future Design, Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust); Isabel Lasala, Lasala & Lasala Design Studio; RMIT)

This session examines the design, maintenance, and community-activation of cemeteries, drawing on international and Australian-specific examples. Presenters will discuss new programs that bring live music, virtual tours, wayfinding, horticulture, beekeeping and more into urban cemeteries. A major theme will be the balance between ‘site activation’ for surrounding communities and the necessity of maintaining a somber and respectful space for families.

Anna Halafoff (Deakin University): Buddhism, Deathcare and Dying in Australia

This presentation examines the material record of Buddhism in Australia, largely evident in funerary practices across the north of the continent dating back to the 1800s. In doing so it contributes to dismantling the myth of a White Christian Australia, which permeates the public mind and contemporary deathcare in this country.

Margaret Gibson (Griffith University) and Larissa Hjorth (RMIT): Memorials to murdered women: encounter, contestation and meaning-making

The memorial landscape as Morgan writes is always: “at one and the same time a landscape of power, a landscape of forgetting, and a landscape of silences” (Morgan, 2008:1). This paper is based on an emerging project examining the spatial and digital landscape of memorials to femicide in an Australian context of commemorative culture. Through a particular memorial case study, it will consider questions of governance, contestation, and meaning-making in everyday spaces of encounter.

Chair: Tamara Kohn (The University of Melbourne)

Participants: Catherine Bell (Australian Catholic University), Laura Woodward, Eric Jong, Leah Heiss, Elizabeth Hallam (Oxford University)

Artists and designers at this roundtable will show images and discuss their works. They will consider how we might reimagine processes of dying, death, and disposal and ask how art and design can invite audiences and consumers to explore new ways of approaching and dealing with death and its aftermath.

Hannah Fowler (The Conscious Dying Institute): “The Last Ecstatic Days" Q/A.

Hannah will be discussing the transformational care Ethan Sisser received throughout "The Last Ecstatic Days," and how Ethan's intentional and individualized approach toward his death transformed not only his experience but the lives of all those who cared for him. Hannah will discuss how the film hopes to impact end-of-life education and create new standards for community supported end of life care models.

Dr Annetta Mallon: The Mallon Model, supporting home-based dying without carer burnout

Based on independent research with end of life doulas in four countries, the Mallon Model is a simple, flexible, easy to reproduce model for home-based dying for VAD and expected deaths. Suitable for people at any age, with and without disabilities, the model is inclusive, safe, and helps support care networks while avoiding carer burnout which is one of the most pressing issues in end of life care internationally.

Sam Hooker (University of Bath): Why is using a funeral director the default?

In this talk I will present a brief history of how we have arrived at the present default of handing off the body to professionals, namely funeral directors, and consider what role professionals ought or ought not to have in the immediate after death period for families. As part of this, I will discuss the findings of my master's research that looked at professional opinions on home death care.

Jennifer Moran Stritch (University of Shannon, Ireland) The Death Doula/Death Midwife in Contemporary Ireland

Death doulas (DD) or death midwives are described as companions/advocates for the dying. While based on the birth doula role, the DD role is not as well articulated, with a great deal of variation in the literature. A lack of consistency exists in terms of the education and training DDs receive and whether it should be a registered title within the health and social care landscape.

Chair: Melissa Reader (Violet)

Of the 100,000 predictable deaths across Australia each year, 60% occur in aged care settings . One in three people (34%) in residential aged care will die within their first 12 months of residence . Among the elderly and frail, and their caregivers and families, the absence of acceptance, communication and preparation has meant our default has become hospitalisation, when, in fact, in most cases hospital is not the preferred option of people at the end of life . How can we work together to bridge the gaps across aged care, health care and death care to help more people have dignified, compassionate deaths, where people's preferences align with their experiences?

A robust conversation between experts in clinical care, aged care and innovation.

Shea Evans (GMCT): The Carbon Cost of Burial and Cremation

Customers find it very hard to know what the environmental impact their decisions are when it comes to death, however utility bills and airline tickets give customers the option to “go green”. When it comes time to return a loved one’s body back to the environment can cemeteries offer the same?

Veenat Arora: Swargarohan Crematorium Project: A Sustainable Innovation for Open Air Cremation

Ross George (Austeng)

Shereef Metwally (INVIROPOD)

Chair: Tamara Kohn (The University of Melbourne)

Participants: Larissa Hjorth (RMIT University), Eric Green (Green Pet-Burial Society), Alicia Kennedy (Cherished Pet Care)

This session explores how we care for and grieve dying and dead animal companions. Participants explore changing popular desires for the commemoration and handling of dead animals, and what changes are required to our deathcare systems to meet these needs.