Our lab publication reflects on the ways in which the language used to describe ‘assisted dying’ is itself a political choice with concrete implications. In short, language matters when thinking about assisted dying.

Using end-of-life stories in films and photographs, this workshop shed light on the relationship between palliative care and assisted dying. It began with short presentations using material from Switzerland, France, California, and Québec. The second part of the workshop was a discussion of how patient stories complicate the assisted dying-palliative care relationship in Canada and abroad.

Jordan McCullough presented a paper on the role of stories in the assisted dying debates in France and Belgium as part of the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Modern and Contemporary France, which took place at the University of Southampton. Jordan’s paper focused on the story-cases of Vincent Humbert and Jean-Marie Lorand.

In her keynote at the ‘French Studies & the Medical Humanities: Critical Intersectionalities’ Conference, Anna Elsner focused on the role of the Anne Bert story in assisted dying law-making and examined the complexities, failures and highlights of interdisciplinary work that challenges the boundaries of French Studies & the Medical Humanities.

This 2024 theme issue of ‘Literature and Medicine’ published by Johns Hopkins University Press considers transnational, transcultural and multilingual perspectives on dying & illness narratives since the 1970s. It is guest-edited by Anna Elsner & Steven Wilson, featuring contributions by Joe Wood, Katja Herges, Marc Keller, Julia Pröll, Franziska Gygax, Jordan McCullough and Maria Vaccarella.

In a special issue of the journal ‘Literature and Medicine’ entitled ‘Cultures of Palliative Care’, Marc Keller analysis three texts from contemporary German- and French-speaking literature that address the existential suffering of older people who are losing or have lost their ill partner and therefore wish to die.

Swiss author Nicola Bardola sparked debate on assisted suicide with his 2005 novel “Schlemm”. In 2024, it was republished in an expanded form as “Der größtmögliche Beweis für Liebe”. In conversation with Marc Keller, Bardola discusses the novel, the evolution of assisted suicide in Germany and Switzerland, and the concept of a good death, exploring how literature and film contribute to this topic.

Marc Keller and Jordan McCullough presented papers on their Assisted Lab research at the 65th Annual Conference of the Society for French Studies, held at the University of Stirling. Marc presented on dual euthanasia and the question of existential suffering, while Jordan considered contemporary assisted dying memoirs as a new form of ars moriendi manual.

This blog post from Joe Wood, Visiting Fellow at Assisted Lab, explores some of the issues around our Living Archive of Assisted Dying, focusing on our approach and the importance of analysing the stories we tell about assisted dying as more countries consider legalisation.

At the McGill International Palliative Care Conference in October 2024, members of the innovative research project, Assisted Lab, will hold a workshop utilizing patient stories to explore the relationship between palliative care provision and medically assisted dying in Canada.

In this current controversy for BMJ Medical Humanities, we question how medical humanities researchers are to make sense of the role of these stories in law-making, and critically reflect on a digital archive that seeks to make these interconnections visible.

Philosopher Daniel Weinstock, who has first-hand knowledge of the evolution of the legal framework governing MAID in Canada, is our first guest. In conversation with Assisted Lab’s Vanessa Rampton, he shares his insights into Canada’s trajectory, the specificities of Québec’s place within it, and how norms and values change over time.

On Friday 28 June 2024, a group of international researchers, from a range of disciplines, came together in Newcastle University to discuss the question of disenfranchised grief at the end of life and work towards a edited collection on the topic. The workshop was organised by Jordan McCullough and featured input from scholars working on assisted dying, late-life care and perinatal loss.

The valorization of individual choice is often at the heart of decisions for an assisted death. Yet broader cultural assumptions inform beliefs about autonomy, what kinds of life are worth living and why. Prior to Assisted Lab, Vanessa Rampton worked on these questions in eastern Europe; her book on liberalism and freedom in Russia is published in Russian translation by Academic Studies Press.

Vanessa Rampton participated in the 26th Annual Law, Culture + the Humanities conference, and gave a paper on possible categorizations of the different ways in which assisted dying stories are cited in legal procedures.

Anna Elsner contributed to the Leuven Centre for Health Humanities series on Trust in Medicine with a lecture entitled “Law Stories - Personal Narratives and the Legalization of Assisted Dying”.

Jordan McCullough and Marc Keller reflect on the ethical, legal, and linguistic dilemmas faced when constructing our “Living Archive of Assisted Dying.” Their considerations highlight Assisted Lab’s journey of creating a digital archive at the nexus of the multilingual, legal and digital medical humanities.

Assisted Lab’s letter by Anna Elsner and Vanessa Rampton is featured in The Economist as a response to its investigation ‘The Rights and Wrongs of Assisted Dying’ (13 April 2024), and the prospects for changing the law in Britain.

An online series bringing together international scholars in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences to discuss disenfranchised grief in various late- and end-of-life contexts.

Volume on Literature and Medicine edited by Anna Elsner and Monika Pietrzak-Franger in Cambridge University Press’s Critical Concept Series published.

At Gesundheitsforum St. Gallen - a public program focused on questions of health and medicine organized by University of St. Gallen’s School of Medicine - Anna Elsner gave an overview of how experiences of death and dying are mediated in twentieth and twenty-first century literature.

Following the duo-euthanasia of former Dutch Prime Minister Dries van Agt and his wife Eugenie, current Prime Minister Mark Rutte romantically compared them to a literary couple from the 17th century. Wouter Schrover and Marc Keller discuss how contemporary literature and film reveal the ambivalences of joint suicides, suggesting that a simplistic, romanticising understanding is not appropriate.

Positionen zur Sterbehilfe
Wie gehen wir als Gesellschaft mit schwer kranken oder sterbenden Menschen um? Wie können wir Brücken vom Sterbenlassen zur Sterbebegleitung schlagen? Wie weit soll die Sterbehilfe gehen?
Moderation: Rolf Bossart
Gäste:
Dr. med. Erika Preisig, Sterbehelferin und Aktivistin
Dr. Matthias Ackeret, Autor und Publizist
Dr. des. Marc Keller, Literaturwissenschaftler

At a medical humanities conference at FU Berlin entitled ‘Mental Health erzählen in Literatur und Medizin. Aushandlungen von psychischer Gesundheit und Krankheit aus intersektionaler Perspektive’, Marc Keller gives a paper on the question of what role grief, depression and existential suffering play in the suicide of older people who lose their spouse.

The edited volume ‘Juristendichtung. Ferdinand von Schirachs Werk zwischen Literatur und Recht’ contains various studies on the work of the German writer Ferdinand von Schirach. Marc Keller has contributed an article in which he examines the portrayal of assisted suicide debates in the theatre play and film ‘Gott’.

Marc Keller and Anna Elsner have contributed a book review of Emmanuèle Bernheim’s ‘Tout s’est bien passé’ to the edited volume ‘Ethik des assistierten Suizids: Autonomien, Vulnerabilitäten, Ambivalenzen’ that looks at the ethical, legal and social challenges of assisted suicide in the three German-speaking countries of Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

Medical technologies are not just tools in the medical encounter. Rather, they shape patient expectations, ideas about health and a good life. In this podcast for University of Wisconsin’s podcast series Medical Education Matters, Vanessa Rampton discusses technologies, privilege and power in the age of artificial intelligence.

A recent push to legalize assisted dying in France obscures more fundamental problems that plague end-of-life care.

Cet évènement, qui réunit Assisted Lab, des praticiens des soins palliatifs de la Maison Gardanne, et divers artistes à la Fondation Camargo vise à réfléchir à ‘L’Art du Soin’. Autrement dit, comment l’assistance, les soins, et l’art sont-ils conçus dans les processus différents de l’assistance médicale à mourir et des soins palliatifs.

Preisverleihung des Marie Heim-Vögtlin-Preises 2022 in St. Gallen - mit Gewinnerin Anna Elsner, Ben Jann, Matthias Egger und Verena E. Müller, die Biografin von Marie Heim-Vögtlin.

Interview with Anna Elsner as a French citizens’ council of 150 members of the public will meet Friday to begin discussions on end-of-life care, including whether assisted suicide should be legalised. As French laws have evolved over the last two decades, calls have increased to allow medically assisted deaths for terminally ill patients.

Anna Elsner studies how literature addresses and shapes the role of dying in society. Her innovative work has earned her the Swiss National Science Foundation’s Marie Heim-Vögtlin Prize for 2022.

397 early-career researchers won European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants, including Anna Elsner for the project Assisted Dying in European Writing and Visual Culture: Reciprocal Interactions between Law, Medicine and the Arts since 2000