One Day Seminar – The Cultural Life of Death in Punishment

1 September 2014

Venue: Room G21A, Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU. Map and directions: http://www.london.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/home/map.pdf

Convenors: Lizzie Seal, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Sussex and Evi Girling, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Keele University

Funded by the Socio-Legal Studies Association: http://www.slsa.ac.uk/

This one day seminar is a unique opportunity to bring together scholars working on all aspects of death in punishment. ‘Death in punishment’ refers to all instances in which death occurs in or through penal practices and institutions, such as:

The death penalty

Dying on death row

Life Without Parole/Whole life sentences/Long prison sentences

Deaths in custody (not limited to prison, but including other ‘carceral spaces’ such as immigration detention centres)

Ageing/dying in prison

The intention is that the seminar will enable participants to explore productive crossings and synergies across disciplinary boundaries. These could include, but are not limited to: hope and hopelessness in penal institutions; end of life management within penal institutions (medical ethics, health care, administrative procedures); death in prison/custody and the challenges of its representation in popular culture; miscarriages of justice; the pains of death in punishment; death in punishment and intersectional social inequalities; life and death as tokens of punitiveness and tolerance in legal systems and penal cultures.

The aim of the seminar is to explore potential synergies, overlapping concepts and ways of analysing death in punishment across different areas. To this end, we invite papers that are works in progress but are also papers based on summaries of completed projects or existing publications that reflect on possible synergies with different aspects of death in punishment.

Following the seminar, the convenors intend to submit a proposal for a special issue of a journal on death in punishment, which will feature articles based on papers delivered.

Call for papers

The seminar is free to delegates and includes lunch and refreshments. Places are limited. We aim to cover reasonable travel costs for those presenting a paper. Research students and early career researchers are encouraged to submit abstracts, as are more established academics and researchers. We also invite participation and attendance from legal practitioners and representatives from campaigning organisations.

Our deadline for the submission of abstracts is 23 May 2014. Please complete and submit this form: presentation form. Submission of abstracts is now closed.

Find the seminar programme here: SLSA Seminar The Cultural Lives of Death in Punishment Programme Final for circulation

Contact: Lizzie Seal e.c.seal@sussex.ac.uk or Evi Girling e.j.girling@keele.ac.uk