Online conference that aims to focus on the early modern deathbed in an interdisciplinary way. The event is organised by Benedikt Brunner from the IEG Mainz and Martin Christ, Junior Fellow at the Max Weber College. With presentations by IEG Director Irene Dingel ("Confessing in the Contexts of Dying and Narratives of Death") and IEG staff member Benedikt Brunner ("The Deathbed in Early Modern Protestant Funeral Sermons"), among others. The event is open to the public. Register by August 25 via email to martin.christ@uni-erfurt.de. Speakers: Alexandra Bamji (Leeds) Benedikt Brunner (Mainz) Friedrich J. Becher (Bonn) Isabel Casteels (Leuven) Martin Christ (Erfurt) Louise Deschryver (Leuven) Irene Dingel (Mainz) Vanessa Harding (London) Vera Henkelmann (Erfurt) Imke Lichterfeld (Bonn) Adam Mezes (Budapest) Birgit Ulrike Münch (Bonn) Cornelia Richter (Bonn) Erik Seeman (Buffalo) Violet Soen (Leuven) Hillard von Thiessen (Rostock) Elizabeth Tingle (Leicester) Alexandra Walsham (Cambridge) About the conference: Both in our time and in the past, death was one of the most important aspects of anyone’s life. The early modern period saw drastic changes in rites of death, burials and commemoration. The Reformation, European expansion, scientific advances and changes in public health and hygiene all contributed to the changing ways in which men and women in this period experienced death. This international and interdisciplinary conference expands the scholarship on death by focusing on perhaps the most important period connected to death: the last moments of life. By focusing on this particular moment in a range of European countries and their colonies, the conference investigates how men and women prepared for their death, how friends and family experienced the death of a person and what an early modern deathbed looked like. While the conference investigates the last moments in a bedchamber, it also contrasts them with extreme situations, such as the moments before an execution or prolonged deaths because of serious diseases. The conference seeks to combine insights from history, art history, theology and other disciplines in order to shed light on this crucial moment in a person’s life. It considers the whole early modern period in order to trace changes over a long period of time and investigates different national, regional and local contexts to enable meaningful comparisons.