Podcasts about professor douglas davies

Exploring the faith behind the pomp and pageantry of the Queen's funeral. Millions will have watched the historic funeral service from Westminster Abbey and the Committal at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was laid to rest. For some, the services will be full of meaning and resonance. Others will be less familiar with the Christian rituals that have evolved over centuries. Ernie Rea is joined by writer and journalist Catherine Pepinster, Professor Douglas Davies, Rev Dr Giles Fraser and Andrew Carwood MBE (Director of Music, St Paul's Cathedral) to discuss and illuminate the meaning, symbolism and significance of the Queen's state funeral. Producer: Rebecca Maxted Assistant Producer: Peter Everett Editor: Dan Tierney

How did death become so important in the Christian tradition? How did the death of Jesus speak to the early Christians, and how does it speak to us today? How do the ways we think about death help us engage with life? How does our care for creation challenge our approach to death? Professor Douglas Davies is an anthropologist and a theologian, a fellow of both the Academy of Social Sciences and the British Academy, and a Professor in Theology at Durham University. For more about Douglas, see here. This episode was recorded 19/02/2020.

My guest this week is Professor Douglas Davies, Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University. We learn about his Welsh background and how he has been in Durham for a total of 26 years, including the time he was there as a student. This interview takes a different form to most of the others in this podcast series in that it has less of an autobiographical dimension and it has made me rethink many of the questions at the heart of my research. Douglas discusses the concept of career planning, and its relationship to issues of social class, and why he thinks there is an element of futility to nostalgia as luck and chance are the two great facts of life. He talks about the problem that he has with retrospective ‘what if’ scenarios. Douglas asks whether with nostalgia we are looking for a prelapsarian paradise, ‘the perfect day’ and the desire for patterns and why they are a pathological expression of the drive for meaning. We talk about how people develop their worldviews and the problem with synchronicity and why we have the desire to see agency in the world. He thinks these are games played by the brain. We find out why for Douglas films are doing what myths have always done – namely, the overcoming of opposites, and we learn about the difference between values and ideas and their relationship with identity. He raises the concept of destiny and how it is invoked by terrorists and politicians and asks where nostalgia fits with this notion. The conversation then turns to the role of trivial events and how they impact on us and a stream of consciousness approach to life, and we find out why Douglas has a problem with revisiting special moments. We discuss whether nostalgia can be a positive evolutionary phenomenon and, conversely, we learn why there can be a side of nostalgia which entails engaging with fear. Douglas brings Durkheim into the discussion in the context of how society lives within us yet ‘I am me’, and we find out why the British don’t like apprenticeships. At the end of the interview we talk about how conventions change and the problem with predictive certainty and the ‘what have I learned?’ scenario and its relationship with wisdom as well as why, for Douglas, both the ‘looking back’ and ‘looking forward’ models are flawed. Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Douglas Davies and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.

This New Writing North podcast was recorded at Durham Book Festival 2018. In this episode, palliative care specialist Kathryn Mannix talks to Professor Douglas Davies about her new book With the End in Mind, an exploration of one of the biggest taboos in our society and the only certainty we all share: death. They discuss how important it is to re-claim public understanding of death, and how it allows us to plan and relate to our dearest during the last part of our, or their, lives. Durham Book Festival is commissioned by Durham County Council and produced by New Writing North. Find out more about the festival at durhambookfestival.com.

Buried within medieval archives is the story of Joan of Leeds – a nun who faked her own death in order to run away and live a wanton life. Professor Sarah Rees Jones of York University tells Edward the story. And why not everyone wants to be cremated even though we’re running out of space for burials - Professor Douglas Davies, director of Durham University’s Centre of Death and Life Studies and Mohamed Omer, board member of ‘Gardens of Peace’ the largest dedicated Muslim cemetery in the country discuss the theological reasons for burial. Following our special programme from Lagos last weekend we hear the latest results and predictions from Mayeni Jones in Nigeria. Producers: Carmel Lonergan Harry Farley Editor: Amanda Hancox Photo credit: Borthwick Institute for Archives, University of York.

The rituals of Remembrance Sunday still have power to move us. The thought of the millions who died, many of whom have no known grave; they are victims of war known only to God. For the many families who mourned loved ones killed in the World Wars, the fact that there were no bodies to bury, no tangible evidence of death, made the process of grieving and letting go all the more difficult. But does it pose a problem religiously? Joining Ernie Rea to discuss how we mourn our dead loved ones in the absence of a body are Professor Douglas Davies, Director of the Centre for Death and Life Studies at the University of Durham; Dr Miri Freud-Kandel, Fellow in Modern Judaism at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies; and Dr Chetna Kang, who is a Consultant Psychiatrist and Hindu Priest. Producer: Amanda Hancox.

The rituals of Remembrance Sunday still have power to move us. The thought of the millions who died, many of whom have no known grave; they are victims of war known only to God. For the many families who mourned loved ones killed in the World Wars, the fact that there were no bodies to bury, no tangible evidence of death, made the process of grieving and letting go all the more difficult. But does it pose a problem religiously? Joining Ernie Rea to discuss how we mourn our dead loved ones in the absence of a body are Professor Douglas Davies, Director of the Centre for Death and Life Studies at the University of Durham; Dr Miri Freud-Kandel, Fellow in Modern Judaism at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies; and Dr Chetna Kang, who is a Consultant Psychiatrist and Hindu Priest. Producer: Amanda Hancox.

Professor Douglas Davies, an anthropologist and theologian at the University of Durham has studied death, dying and after-life beliefs in addition to editing the Encyclopaedia of Cremation.