The funeral sector is a relatively small yet important societal sector where every member of society at one point or another passes through. Our research hopes to contribute to new solutions for various issues experienced by the sector. This interdisciplinary project, created at the request of and in collaboration with the Flemish and Belgian funeral industry, will result in scientific progress in four areas:
1) a more accurate and coherent juridical framework for dealing with dead bodies
2) a comprehensive ethical reflection from a care ethics perspective on the environmental impact of our burial choices (based on empirical information from a life cycle analysis (LCA) of different burial techniques)
3) an analysis and proposal for meeting burial needs in a super-diverse society (with a particular focus on the Muslim community as the largest minority group in Belgium)
4) an analysis of the impact of policies during the Covid-19 pandemic on the funeral industry and a protocol for funerals during/after catastrophes and public health crisis.
Additionally, the social finality of the project consists in
- exploring and initiating professionalization opportunities (such as an ethics committee for the funeral industry, academic modules for funeral director training)
- initiatives to facilitate societal debate around funeral choices (such as news releases in various media and a podcast on the ethics of funerals).
Find out more about each research strand through the panel on the left.