Death, Ritual, and Belief

Douglas J. Davies is Professor in the Study of Religion and Director of the Centre for Death and Life Studies at Durham University, UK. He is the author of Natural Burial (2012), The Theology of Death (2008) and A Brief History of Death (2004). He is also the editor, along with Lewis Mates, of The Encyclopedia of Cremation (2005). Professor Davies is a Fellow of the British Academy, as well as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the Learned Society of Wales.

• Symbols, death and dying; rituals and corpses; soul, ethics and destiny; ancestors and identity; ghosts, purity and the influential dead; theories of grief; memorials; sacrifice, violence and conquest; the death of Jesus and Christianity; death, grief and the birth of religions.

"Professor Douglas Davies' perceptive and thought-provoking book... provides a rich framework in which to consider the perennial questions of the human response to death. From this book, the fruit of wide-ranging research and reading, it is clear that Professor Davies has established himself as one of the leading writers in an increasingly important field." --Geoffrey Rowell, The Tablet