Existential Dis/Connections: Opening up Conversations

FASS, The Open University

Global Challenges and Social Justice (GCSJ) seminar series

In this seminar we will introduce the developing work of Existential Dis/Connections.This Open Societal Challenge seeks to offer a hub for addressing key themes, concerning:the existential threats of mortality and the aftermath of death;the existential threats of the climate and ecological emergencies;and the need for a decolonising approach to both, to break out of coloniality/modernity and connect these central crises facing all life on earth.The seminar will offer tasters for making such connections from a number of different starting points, opening up conversations and encouraging new spaces that can accommodate discomfort, uncertainty and new possibilities.We have a cross-Faculty and cross-disciplinary panel, all members of the Open Societal Challenge of Existential Dis/connections, as follows:Teresa Ashe. Staff Tutor (Senior Lecturer) in Economics at the Open University. Her scholarship focusses on the power of expert knowledge in environmental international relations.Korina Giaxoglou. Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and English Language at the Open University’s School of Languages and Applied Linguistics. Her research focuses on narrative and affect across different contexts. Her approach is interdisciplinary, crossing and bridging theories, concepts, and methods from a range of fields, including death, grief &amp; bereavement studies.Lystra Hagley-Dickinson. Regional Academic (Staff Tutor), Lecturer in Criminology and Chair of Racial Justice working group in the Department of Social Policy and Criminology, School of Global Studies and Social Sciences. Under the broad church of decolonisation, her focus is to problematise the politics of death, loss, and bereavement through feminist standpoint epistemology and perspective knowledge, based in personal experiences of death and bereavement.Catherine Pestano. Visiting Fellow with Open Thanatology, with experience of teaching and working in social work, and business, including creative approaches. Her research interests include end of life, LGBTQ* and intersectional diversity, creative expressive arts and mental health.The Teams room will remain available after 1pm (not recorded)for open conversations, supported by Gillian Ferguson, a former social work practitioner and now Programme Leader for the Doctorate in Health and Social Care (DHSC) in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS).Host is Jane McCarthy, Honorary Associate at the Open University, Visiting Professor at Bath University, Visiting Fellow at Reading University. A family and relational sociologist with a central focus on decolonising death and its aftermath and the implications for the climate and ecological emergency.

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Existential Dis/Connections: Opening up Conversations

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