
About the Nonprofit
Death Scholars, Inc.
Death Scholars, Inc. is a nonprofit organization of communication and communication-adjacent scholars focused on research related to end-of-life, death, mourning, and memorialization communication. Our mission is to foster interdisciplinary collaboration by connecting scholars whose work is often siloed by subfield divides. While we began as a predominantly U.S.-centric group, we are expanding to include international scholarship. We support professionals in end-of-life and death care, host regular online events, and maintain a growing repository of academic resources. We also provide an archive of death-related scholarship to facilitate better citational politics and acknowledge our academic inheritance. Our organization is committed to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion by highlighting marginalized communities and their experiences.
Topics of Scholarship
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Memorialization/Community Memory
- Indigenous Death and Dying
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Marginalized Death
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LGBTQIA+ Issues in Death/Dying
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Disenfranchised Grief
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Ambiguous Loss
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Rhetorics of Death
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Suicidality
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Death and Religion
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Death and Atheism/Humanism
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Performance Studies; Bereavement, Grief, Dying, and Post-Mortem
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Necropolitics
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Palliative Care
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Hospice Care
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Funeral
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Industry/Professionalization/Organization(s)
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Death Doulas
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Infant Death and Dying
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Maternal Mortality
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Technology and Death
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Social Media and Death
Methods
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Applied Research
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Archival Research
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Trends in Death/Dying - Quantitative Research
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Ethnography - Qualitative Research
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Rhetorical Approaches/Criticism - Qualitative Research
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Autoethnography - Qualitative Research
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Mixed Methods
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Critical Research
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Discourse Analysis
Our primary purposes as a nonprofit include...
1. Education and Translation
Scholars translate their end-of-life, death, and bereavement research for the general public.
2. Community Service
Support for communication (and communication-adjacent) scholars as they navigate the precarities of topics related to end-of-life, death, and bereavement.
3. Career Development
Professional development for end-of-life, death, and bereavement scholars throughout each career stage.​
4. Research & Praxis
Members of the nonprofit produce research that intervenes in policies that impact people experiencing end-of-life, death, and bereavement (grief).​
Nonprofit
Information
This website is operated by Death Scholars, Inc. Our organization is a registered nonprofit in the state of Kentucky, USA, connected to the Omicron Sigma Kappa honors society at Murray State University. Omicron Sigma Kappa is a student organization designed to foster leadership development and provide networking opportunities for organizational communication students, facilitated by Geoffrey Luurs, PhD.
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Our leadership team is comprised of university professors, independent scholars, industry leaders, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Our membership contributes to research projects within our internal lab structure. More information about our history, leadership team, values/vision, and membership can be found below.

