The timing of our online (late) autumn gathering is no coincidence: it is a moment to listen to other stories of dying, decomposing, and returning in a different shape that might guide us into futures of mutual learning, becoming and belonging. In that spirit, we invite participants to try out and try on transformational learning practices fit to these December days:
- dining with the (more-than-human) dead;
- writing mortuaries accompanied by chrysanthemums;
- annual practices of tending graveyards, held consciously alongside feminist political ecology considerations;
- composing a multispecies death portrait;
- paddling with ghosts of the past on mythical rivers descending into underworlds;
- mourning with horses;
- studying death with rats (e.g. Nelson, 2020),
- gathering in a more-than-human fishbowl to deliberate how to bury a newly extinct being.
- … (surprise us with your proposal of a transformational learning practice).
This online symposium asks
- What needs to die? And why?
- What can non-human fauna, flora, fungi… teach us about letting go, releasing, mourning and grief?
- How might we resist shoring up colonial and other universalizing narratives when death emerges through everyday encounter? (Nelson, 2020)
- What stories help us matter differently as we continue to world with others in this time of rapid change? (Nelson, 2020)
- Why do we need new or renewed rituals and stories of death or renewed ones for dying well with the more-than-human world (rather than merely among it)?
- Which new death-practices or renewed death-practices can we renew?
- How can eco-thanatology inform our practices of mourning, burial, and letting go?
- Which ethical charters and protocols can serve palliative care and grief for and with(in) the more than human world?
- Which (eco)myths involving the more-than-human world can teach us more about coping with death?
- How can we make our deaths and palliative care practices more sustainable?
- Which learnings and practices contribute to the co-creation of an eco-thanatology?
- …
Key dates
- Registration via NSU website: 01 November- 01 December
- Online symposium: Saturday 12- Sunday 13 December
The program
You do not have to join the whole program. See the program as a menu card. Take care of yourself, attention and energy and pick the sessions that suit your schedule, agenda and attention span.
SATURDAY 12 DECEMBER
SUNDAY 13 DECEMBER
Pricing
We work with 2 prices.
- 20 euros for NSU 2026 members (= you participated in our winter and/or summer symposium 2026)
- 70 euros for non-NSU 2026 members
Both presenters and the people who will not present and want to participate and learn together – can register and pay in November. The tickets will appear in the NSU webshop by November 1st.
This investment of yours covers…
- Miroboard, Zoom and website costs
- Access to a platform, network and collective wisdom for mutual learning
- Communication through structured emails (before, during and after the symposium)
- 10 euros per person will be used to buy, install and maintain a rainwater storage and filter solution at the location of our winter/spring symposium 2027 in Lithuania: we want to give back to a place where we gather and (un)learn with(in) the more-than-human world.
Members of the Ecofeminist Society (2026) can join this symposium for free. It might be a better investment to become a member, as this will activate access to more circles, including the Ecofeminist Economics (2027) circle. You can sign up to the waiting list until October 31.
Registration
If you do not want to become a member of the Ecofeminist Society, you have to wait for a portal opening at the website of the Nordic Summer University… Sign up to NSU circle 5’s newsletter to receive the news about this online symposium in your mailbox. Subscribe here.
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