Call for Papers
Interdisciplinary Conference
Blessed Are Those Who Mourn: GRIEF FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE PRESENT
University of St Andrews, Wednesday 24 & Thursday 25 June 2026
Due by Monday 2 February 2026
More than fifty years after the publication of Philippe Ariès' Western Attitudes Toward Death (1974), it is past time for a comprehensive reassessment of the history, culture, and experience of grief, loss, and mourning. Recent decades have seen profound developments across fields, including the rise of global and transnational history; the history of emotions ano affect theory; the anthropology of death; analyses of the politics of "grievability"; and new interdisciplinary approaches to the relationship between brain, body, and society. Together, these innovations open up fresh ways of understanding how individuals and communities negotiate loss across diverse temporal, cultural, and social contexts.
Blessed Are Those Who Mourn seeks to initiate this reassessment by examining grief as a historically situated, socially embedded, and politically resonant phenomenon. Bringing together scholars working across disciplines, periods, and regions, the conference aims to break down siloed approaches and foster new dialogue on the history and culture of grief.
We welcome papers from across the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. We are particularly, but not exclusively, interested in papers on the below themes:
What grief is: boundaries, definitions, and phenomenology
The politics of grief, including who is permitted to mourn, when, how, and for whom; the intersection between grief, status and power
The connection between grief and other emotions
Funerals, mourning and the "practice" of grief after death
Grieving, senses and the body
Continuity and change
Medical approaches to grief, grieving, and consolation
The materiality and material culture of grief, including art works, monuments, seals, effigies, tombs, jewellery.
Please send your proposals for twenty-minute papers (to be delivered in English), including a title, an abstract of c. 150 words, and short bio, to griefconference.sta2026@gmail.com by Monday 2 February 2026.