NCA 2025 Recap: The Death & Dying Division
- eoldeathscholars
- Jan 6
- 7 min read
Author: Colleen Campbell Pendleton
Date: December 15, 2025
End-of-Life, Death, and Bereavement/Grief Scholars:
The National Communication Association’s Annual Convention in Denver, Colorado has passed into the history books! We are proud to share the work of the Death & Dying Division membership (and larger community at NCA) that has helped to push our research niche forward another year.
C. Campbell Pendleton: As the 2025 Chair of the NCA Death & Dying Division (now, Immediate Past Chair in 2026), it is an honor to share time with colleagues in this research area. Seeing each other brings a huge sense of community warmth and existential relief. However, it seems there is never enough time to fully engage in our research over a long weekend with presentation time limits, so I encourage our growing subfield to do what we do best – communicate! Please be together in person and online as much as possible. This has been our commitment as a division: Monthly meetings, ongoing contact, and deepening relationships with those who produce this sensitive and important work.
Most of all, we welcome new voices and perspectives to our growing network, community, and leadership. There is space for your experimental, performance, and art-based work beyond traditional scholarship in the online spaces we’ve created. Please reach out if the division can host your contributions in multimedia formats.
Engagement Opportunities:
YouTube. Ask about hosting research talks, interviews, and lectures on the Death Scholars, Inc. YouTube Channel. This non-profit shares resources with the Death & Dying Division to expand our reach.
Workshops.
Research Teams.
Archival Teams.
Death Cafes.
…And more! We’re open to hearing how we can extend our research to create new pathways of support and care.
All suggestions and inquiries can be directed to our shared division email:
eoldeathscholars@gmail.com – Your message will be forwarded to a leadership contact.
Disclaimer: All intellectual property, such as written work, videos, art, or performance pieces belong to the original creators/authors/facilitators of the content. Death Scholars, Inc. simply provides the digital/mediated space for collective reach/visibility online, free of charge, for scholars of end-of-life, death, and bereavement/grief.
2025: Looking Back with Gratitude
Social Media and Digital Communications. In particular, I want to acknowledge Bryanna Hebensteit’s multimedia work on behalf of the Death & Dying Division. Any of the content that you may have seen across social media related to the division are Bry’s brainchildren. Without digital outreach, our division would not have had the rapid expansion it has gained.
Relatedly, we are recruiting for the Web and Social Media teams on a rolling basis. Please contact eoldeathscholars@gmail.com if you're interested in multimedia production.
Outreach Initiatives. Andy Acosta and Anna Simank, under the leadership and guidance of our 2025 Vice Chair-Elect, Nicole Costantini, made giant leaps in how we attended to outreach in the last year. Thank you all for your tremendous effort!
Special Events. We had several special events online throughout 2025, organized by Mike Alvarez, Laura Bruns, Heather Smith, Christian Seiter, Nicole Costantini, and other members of the Advisory Board, plus general membership. We will dedicate an entire blog post in 2026 to recapping the success and importance of these events.
Badge Ribbons. For another year, Laura Bruns showered our division with the most fancy "badge bling" at the convention. Laura, thank you for adorning us with the best of the best! See examples below:
2026 Leadership: Toward the NCA Theme, “MOVE/MENT”
Changes in leadership for the 2026 NCA cycle will be announced by our incoming chair, Cheyenne Zaremba, in a separate blog post. Cheyenne has been an instrumental and vital part of our leadership as one of the co-founders of the division, working with our community since 2021. Cheyenne is a rhetorician and scholar of death and dying. Their research is at the intersection of embodied experience and culturally informed discourses of death and dying in an attempt to understand the distance between what we say and believe about death and what we actually do and feel at end-of-life. As a strong and steadfast advocate for graduate student representation, Cheyenne brings high-quality scholarship, lived experience, and forward-thinking to the Chair position. They are responsible for the robust and diverse program planning in 2025, as well as being a founding member of the division. Please reach out to Cheyenne in 2026 for all questions related to the NCA Death & Dying Division.
Cheyenne is joined by Nicole Costantini, our incoming Vice Chair. Nicole led our 2025 outreach initiatives and served as the primary point of contact for new members and incoming graduate students. She brings valuable experience in division leadership (joining us from the Performance Studies division), strong scholarly expertise, and—equally important—exceptionally good vibes. We’re thrilled to welcome her to the next phase in the leadership team.
Laura Bruns (2024 Chair and our 2025 Awards Committee Lead) and Mike Alvarez (2021-2025 Pedagogy and Andragogy Chair), and I will continue to be involved in the Death and Dying Division as mentors, support systems, and community organizers from the Advisory Board. Laura and Mike have been active members of our community since 2021, as founding members.
For a more complete version of how the division manifested alongside our sibling (separate) organization, Death Scholars, Inc., please visit the History page.
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NCA 2025 Details and Announcements
The 2025 NCA Events list is found here:
The 2025 Business Meeting slide deck is found here:
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Distinguished Scholar Award
Dr. Elaine Wittenberg and Dr. Joy Goldsmith
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Top Paper Award
“My Uterus is a Fetal Graveyard”: Using the Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement to Examine Infertility Grief
Christian Seiter, David Johansen, and Michelle Isabel Suarez
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2025 Outgoing Chair | A Long-Winded Epitaph
I’ll be haunting the Death & Dying Division from the Advisory Board, leading the Awards Committee in 2026. Beyond the division, I’m continuing my work with Death Scholars, Inc., supporting the Web Team and program management while still producing research. I stay connected through spaces like NCA and the nonprofit because my commitment to this community, my colleagues, and the discipline remains deep. This subfield has a powerful way of bonding us.
As scholars of death and dying, we understand that endings are also beginnings. The division’s incoming leadership continues to elevate our research and mentorship through care, camaraderie, and service. This is work that is notably unpaid and sustained by the service of our membership. My hope is that the division remains a safe haven: A space defined not only by our capacity to hold grief and memory, but by how carefully and mindfully we hold one another as we do complex work.
As a departing reflection and a caution for our division and others, I urge continued vigilance related to scholarship rooted in ego, beyond the scope of our collective care. End-of-life, death, and bereavement scholarship centers life itself; Our work is contemplative, constructive, and compassionate, not self-aggrandizing. We are not clinicians within the Communication Studies discipline, and while we can offer space, resources, and academic support, we cannot assume responsibility for scholars who disregard ethical boundaries and lead with disrespect for their colleagues. Our openness and inclusivity are strengths as a division, but these qualities also require us to protect the sacred space we have built together by returning to our bylaws, founding principles, and shared commitments. Communication, with compassion for our shared humanity, is the goal of the division.
At the same time, scholarship is too often prioritized over personhood. Good work requires sitting with pain, uncertainty, and loss, individually and collectively, while also honoring self-care, rest, and the many valid ways grief and loss are experienced. Presence and care must coexist with healthy personal boundaries. Self-awareness and genuine warmth are central to how we choose to operate as community members.
As a community of scholars, we speak gently but assertively about these realities. The whole matters: Self, community, scholarship, and the possibility of more honest and balanced relational lives. I am encouraged by our division’s ongoing efforts to build sustainable support and infrastructure, recognizing that this is a collective and evolving responsibility.
Our scholars work in close proximity to death and dying to preserve memory and meaning. Historically, our work prioritizes the care and keeping of humans, non-human animals, and ecologies. We help to tell their stories and help them be remembered. Each life matters; Life is not diminished by death but often clarified through its reality. Though still a young subfield of communication studies, our work is clearly needed, and I am confident in the next generation’s ability to carry it forward.
Please stay tuned for more announcements, blogs, and opportunities from the 2026 Executive Board and Advisory Board members of the NCA Death & Dying Division.
Thank you for your research, your care, and your trust in our leadership over the past year.
With gratitude,
C. Campbell Pendleton
2025 Outgoing Chair | 2026 Immediate Past Chair | 2026 Awards Committee
PS - Please enjoy the annual zombie scholar/walking dead photo:
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