Deliberate Dying Group – an interdisciplinary Working Group

We have no choice about the fact of our death as we will all die. Deliberate dying is about making choices (or having choices made for us) about the place and manner of our death - whether through end-of-life planning or choices about level of medical care, such as resuscitation. Some may plan the end of their life through suicide or need the help of others in assisted dying. These are complex choices and deliberate dying is not a moment but a process. It involves the dying person and the institutional and personal systems around them. It must also include the wider social, cultural and legal constellations around individuals, including belief. Most people do not achieve the death that they wish for, so there is an urgent need for new approaches to promote holistic understanding around deliberate dying across these contexts – hopefully leading to practical interventions to enabling more of us to achieve a ‘good death’.

Exploration of past approaches to death and dying can enable us to question the current ‘taken-for-granted’, providing a context and focus for discussion in the modern world. This project will use the prism of the past to illuminate the spectrum of issues underlying deliberate dying, enabling the development of a robust academic basis on which to build future approaches. 

Who is involved?

Dr Nataly Papadopoulou (Lecturer in Law) 
nataly.papadopoulou@leicester.ac.uk

Professor Sarah Tarlow (Professor of Historical Archaeology)
sat12@leicester.ac.uk

Dr Sarah Gunn (Lecturer in Clinical Psychology)
sg610@leicester.ac.uk

Dr Michaela Senkova (Teaching Fellow, Archaeology and Ancient History)
ms1062@leicester.ac.uk

Professor Liz Wicks (Professor of Human Rights Law)
eaw19@leicester.ac.uk

Professor Tim Coats (Professor of Emergency Medicine) 
tim.coats@le.ac.uk

Dr James Van Oppen (NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Emergency Medicine)
jvo3@leicester.ac.uk 

Contact us

If you have an interest in this developing interdisciplinary research area, please email any member of the team.