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The two-part event will comprise a panel discussion followed by facilitated round-table conversations inspired by the Death Café model.

The event is being hosted by the UNSW School of Social Sciences in collaboration with TASA via Giselle Newton, the Public Sociology portfolio leader.

The panel discussion will be facilitated by fellow member Emma Kirby (Lead of The Care Lab at UNSW)

Despite the inevitability of death and dying, they remain social taboos such that the silence around them leads people to be unprepared, feel isolated and afraid. These experiences compound for patients undergoing cancer treatment, who live with uncertainty.

Event Details:
Date: 14 September 2026
Time: 4:00pm - 6:00pm (AEST)
Location: UNSW Scientia Galleries, John Niland Scientia Building (G19)
Hosted by: UNSW School of Social Sciences in collaboration with The Australian Sociological Association (TASA)

Your Panellists:

 

Louise Chappell, Co-author of Being Patient: Close Encounters in a Cancer World

Scientia Professor Louise Chappell is a SHARP Professor and a member of the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW Sydney.
A Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and former Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Louise’s research interests are in the areas of women’s rights; gender, politics and institutions and comparative federalism and public policy.

Cindy Stocken, PhD candidate researching living wakes

Cindy is an anthropologist and PhD candidate bringing her curiosity to changing end-of-life rites in Australia, in particular the emerging rituals of living funerals. From her established career in travel, learning and development, brand development and as a small business founder, Cindy brings a rich and varied lived experience to her anthropological practice. As Chair of Australian Network of Student Anthropologists she is dedicated to connecting and platforming students, and early career researchers, across institutions. Cindy enjoys actively researching across diverse fields in collaborative environments as part of both the Death Tech Research Team and the Critical Ethnography Lab.

Jodie Clarkson, consumer representative for the Palliative Care Northern Territory

Jodie Clarkson is a palliative care outpatient in Mparntwe (Alice Springs). She has been living with brain cancer since 2017 and has undergone neurosurgery in South Australia and New South Wales as well as chemotherapy in the Northern Territory. Jodie holds a Bachelor of Applied Science and a Master of Education LOTE (Languages Other than English) and EADL (English as an Additional Dialect or Language). She worked and now volunteers with the Aboriginal Interpreter Service training professionals in legal, health and human services. Jodie has published collective learning in the Australian Society of Interpreters and Translators (AUSIT) In Touch Journal: https://www.naati.com.au/news/shouldering-the-learning-burden/
In 2018 Jodie was awarded a Fitzgerald NT Human Rights Award for taking action on promoting, protecting and fulfilling human rights of diverse communities in the Northern Territory.
Powered by ‘Mother Love’ for her son, Jodie lives by the mantra planning for the worst while hoping for the best. She consults with the specialist in palliative medicine at Apmere amantye-akeme (Comfort House) monthly. Jodie’s final wish is to donate her brain to the Charlie Teo Foundation (CTF) for research. Together with the Director of Palliative Care NT and Director of ICU, they lobbied the NT Government to amend The TRANSPLANTATION AND ANATOMY ACT 1979 (in force 24th September 2021) to enable her final wish. Tissue from Jodie’s 2018 recurrent Anaplastic Astrocytoma is part of a world first collaborative research project between The Garvan Institute and CTF. In 2022 Jodie was invited to participate in the inaugural CTF Brain Cancer Online Research Symposium: connecting ‘out of the box’ thinkers from across the world.
Jodie is passionate about contributing to brain cancer research and education; patient autonomy as personal power; and enabling free, prior, informed medical consent that upholds every patients right to fully understand and fully express themselves from their first language first, then English.

Victoria Spence, Founder and Director of Life Rites and mortality doula

Victoria is a holistic funeral director, celebrant, mortality doula, counsellor and pioneer of Life Rites’ model of integrated end-of-life and after-death care.
With a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Philosophy, and two decades in the cultural industries, a Masters in Death, Dying and Palliative Care and training in mind-body somatic modalities, Victoria brings 35 years of unique experience to her work in the creation of Life Rites, and the holistic, hands on and potent re-creation of our death and funeral rites.
Alongside her work in Rites of Passage, she was one of the team that created Picnic Among Friends, a decade long, yearly community memorial event that invited people to bring their own creativity to how they live with love and loss. She co-created the Sydney Festival of Death and Dying (2015-17- ongoing ) with Dr Peter Banki, The Dusk Ceremonies at the Elephant House with Rookwood Necropolis.