Decolonising Death Studies
Edited by Panagiotis Pentaris, Stacey Pitsillides, and Hajar Ghorbani
Routledge, 2026
Decolonising Death Studies is an interdisciplinary edited volume that brings together international perspectives on death, dying, grief, ritual, care, memory, and social justice. The book responds to the limits of death studies when the field is shaped primarily through Western frameworks, and it asks how death, mourning, and end-of-life practices can be understood through more diverse, decolonial, and globally situated perspectives.
The volume creates space for under-represented voices and interdisciplinary conversations across death studies, social sciences, humanities, design, religion, cultural studies, social work, and anthropology. Its central contribution is to position decolonisation not as an additional theme, but as a necessary framework for rethinking how knowledge about death and dying is produced, circulated, and applied.
Hajar Ghorbani is one of the three editors of the volume, alongside Panagiotis Pentaris and Stacey Pitsillides. Her contribution to the editorial team reflects her broader scholarly work on death, mourning, political violence, material culture, and the social agency of dead bodies in contemporary Iran.
The volume includes chapters on funeral rituals, cultural identity, migration, colonial memory, digital death, necropolitics, marginalisation, resistance, community collaboration, and ecological grief.
Book details
Publisher: Routledge
Edition: 1st edition
Publication year: 2026
Pages: 246
Illustrations: 11 black-and-white illustrations
Editors: Panagiotis Pentaris, Stacey Pitsillides, and Hajar Ghorbani
Routledge description
Routledge describes the book as a contribution to death studies that foregrounds decolonising methodologies and perspectives, challenges established norms in the field, and advances more inclusive conversations about death, dying, and end-of-life knowledge.
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