Refiguring Death Rites

Refiguring Death Rites

Welcome to the website of our research programme 'Refiguring Death Rites'. This interdisciplinary programme aims to investigate new ritualizations of death in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is known as one of the most secularized countries in the world. The processes of secularization and individualization put the traditional religious rituals increasingly out of favour, resulting in a quest for new rituals.

Especially in death rites experimentation and innovation is taking place, facilitated by the consumer-oriented undertaking business, and leading to expressions of a more personalized religiosity in materialized form. This research program, drawing on ritual studies and material culture studies, investigates new ritualizations of death in the Netherlands to gain insight into the ways average people who no longer adhere to specific world religions nevertheless practice religion in a different sort of way.

See for more information and activities of the RDR research group:

Centre for Thanatology