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Conferences

Conference: Death in Scotland, from the medieval to the modern: beliefs, attitudes and practices

University of Edinburgh - photo by Philip AllfreyDeath in Scotland, from the medieval to the modern: beliefs, attitudes and practices

Friday 31 Jan 2014 – Sunday 2 Feb 2014
University of Edinburgh

This conference has been organised to accelerate interest and research into Scottish death studies. Our aim is to take a look at Scottish history from a different angle by concentrating on beliefs, attitudes and practices of death.  It is the successor conference to February 2013’s ‘Death in Modern Scotland, 1855 – 1955’. That conference was voted a great success and a book of selected essays is to be published.

This year we have extended the time boundaries by some centuries. The interdisciplinary perspective is vital. The four plenary speakers address themes of archaeology, history, architecture and folklore. Forty-two papers have been accepted; their disciplines include anthropology, archaeology, art history, architecture, folklore, funeral history, history, landscape and design, literature, material culture, medical history, poetry, sculpture, sociology and theology.

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Plenary speakers include:

  • Professor Jane Dawson, John Laing Professor of Reformation History, Edinburgh University: ”With one foot in the grave’: death in life and life in death in Reformation Scotland’.
  • Professor Richard Fawcett, O.B.E., School of Art History, University of St Andrews: ‘The architectural setting of prayers for the dead in later medieval Scotland’.
  • Dr Lizanne Henderson, Lecturer in History, School of Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Glasgow: ‘Fairies, Angels and the Land of the Dead: Robert Kirk’s Lychnobious People’.
  • Professor Sarah Tarlow, Director of the Centre for Historical Archaeology, University of Leicester: ‘Beliefs about bodies: contradictions and conundrums in early modern Scotland’.

Click here to download the full programme

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