Helsinki University, Finland
Title: Concerned, critical and committed: Why are we here and what do we feel deeply about in death online research?
Our ways of doing research on sensitive topics with existential stakes differ from how work is conducted in other fields. This opening keynote is meant to prompt a discussion on the ways we approach our topics and fields, and to bring out
our own motivations and ethos for doing this type of work. Through groups discussions we aim to thereby chisel out our concerns about the future of death online research. What do you feel deeply about? Why is it critical to study these phenomena? And how do we commit to doing ethical, concerned and important work in this field?
School for Design Arts and Creative Industries, Northhumbria University, Newcastle, UK
DigitalDeath – Let’s Question| Share| Redesign| Decolonise| Embody| Craft| Care| &&&
Digital death gives us a lens to rethink and remake our relationship with death and dying, flowing into contemporary death movements that redesign our experience of death like ecoburials which weave feminist more–than–human praxis via bacteria, mushrooms and soil. Digital interfaces create a range of new affordances and aesthetics: from the Second Life pet cemetery crafted by a Japanese man/penguin avatar in 2009, to the range AI thanobots in 2025, who are made of personal data of the dead and chat-based interaction with the bereaved.
In these specific contexts our relationship with the dead is mediated by technologists and algorithms who remain in the background looking in – raising important questions about the diversity, ethics and cognition of our technological production via the black box nature of AI. OpenAI have tested this in practice, revealing how over longer interactions their safeguards degrade, leading at times to death, as their algorithm defaults to its core concept of holding attention not safeguarding.
However digital death need not be flashy interactions like thanobots, VR or holograms of the dead. Often it is much more mundane, considering data retention/ storage/ curation/ access or even connecting people across diasporic spaces – holding space together during hybrid or virtual funerals. The affordances of these phigital spaces and smaller crafted or embodied interactions are areas that design may consider if we are to rethink and question digital colonisation. Exploring how we might decolonise our reliance on America-centric technological platforms, and the implicit political grief that now interweaves popular social media sites, where bereavement is still enacted globally.
One way to resist the technological and cultural convergence of digital death is to craft public debate across audience spectrums – looking for care-full areas of engagement which can hold space for non-denominational conversations blending history, ritual, fantasy and speculation.
Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, UK,
Digital Death in the Making: Who Decides, How, and Why It Matters
A decade ago, the term digital death sounded unusual, even a bit suspicious. It referred mostly to niche experiments at the intersection of technology and emerging socio-cultural practices around dying, grieving, and remembrance. Today, things have changed. The rapid growth of digital technologies and generative AI has fueled an expanding range of products, services, and innovations, while global media attention and shifting cultural dynamics have made the concept of digital death far more familiar, visible, and socially recognized.
As a result, we no longer need to defend the relevance of the topic itself. What matters now are questions of context: where should digital death be discussed? Who should be involved? Under what circumstances? And why do these choices matter?
Drawing on my research project Imaginaries of Immortality in the Age of AI: An Intercultural Analysis and related work across art, business, and social innovation, my talk will explore these questions. Context does not have to be fixed or static; rather, it is something we can actively shape and reshape. Interdisciplinary work, combined with cross-cultural and cross-sector collaboration, is—as I will argue—not only a way to expand knowledge but also a means to guide the evolution of digital death with clear intention, thoughtful values, and a strong sense of responsibility.
Context matters. Death matters. And the decisions we make about both matter.
