Under hösten 2025 kommer deltagarna i samverkansinitiativet samlas till ett antal workshops och seminarier. För dig som skriver uppsats vid Lunds universitet under höstterminen 2025 (primärt på magister- och mastersnivå) i ett intilliggande ämne finns möjlighet att ansluta till några av dessa aktiviteter. Tag i så fall kontakt med projektledaren. 

Den 11–13 februari 2026 kommer anordnas en internationell konferens inom ramen för samverkansinitiativet. Konferensen har rubriken ”Place and Placelessness: Changing Roles of the Cemetery in the Contemporary World”. Mer information kommer här.
 

Place and Placelessness: Changing Roles of the Cemetery in the Contemporary World

Lund University, Sweden, 11-13 February 2026
 

What becomes of place in a time of placelessness? In an age shaped by global migration, digital afterlives, ecological urgency, heritage politics, and changing cultural rituals, the cemetery, once a fixed point of memory and mourning, may face radical transformation. This conference invites interdisciplinary perspectives on the evolving roles, meanings, and forms of the cemetery in contemporary and future societies.

This conference seeks to explore the cemetery not only as a site of death, but as a complex cultural, spiritual, environmental, and technological landscape. The contemporary cemetery is anchored in place yet increasingly decoupled from it. How do cemeteries reflect the social, cultural, spiritual, and environmental concerns of our time? Can cemeteries remain vital spaces of community, subjectivity, and continuity – or must they be reimagined altogether? What is preserved, commemorated, or erased in the management of cemeteries as historical landscapes? How are narratives of identity, belonging, and collective memory inscribed in, or excluded from, these spaces?

We welcome researchers in all disciplines, as well as practitioners, to contribute to a dialogue on the shifting geographies of death, remembrance, and legacy.
Proposals might engage with, but are not limited to, themes such as:

• Transnational death, diasporic cemeteries, and post-mortem disconnection from place

• Virtual cemeteries, data memorials, and online rituals of grief

• Green burials, natural cemeteries, and sustainable funerary practices

• Changing shapes of the cemetery in modern cities

• The negotiation of spiritual, religious, and secular spaces of remembrance

• The resonance of contemporary deathscapes in architecture, landscape design, and art

• Heritage as a contested ‘value’ in past and contemporary cemeteries

• Evolution and reform of historical cemeteries, archaeology of cemeteries, contested histories

• Legal, ethical, and governance questions around post-mortem rights, data, and space
   

Submission Guidelines
 

Please submit a 300-word abstract for individual presentations. Include a short bio (150 words) and information if you need a bursary covering travel expenses.

Send your submission to ive.brissmanctr.luse by 1 October 2025.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 10 October 2025.
 

Information
 

The conference will be held at the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University in southern Sweden. The city of Lund is in the Öresund region and is easily accessible by commuter trains from Copenhagen airport. 

We will be able to offer a limited number of bursaries for European (above all early career) scholars presenting papers at the conference.

The conference is part of the research project ‘Cemeteries of the Future’ generously funded by the joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology at Lund University.
 

Contact
 

For questions or further information, please contact: ive.brissmanctr.luse or erik.sidenvallctr.luse (project PI).

Website: Cemeteries of the future | Centre for Theology and Religious Studies