Episode 110: A conversation with Joanna Wojtkowiak on death rituals and symbolic immortality in contemporary Dutch culture.
In today’s episode, Saul zooms into the Netherlands to talk to to Dr. Joanna Wojtkowiak. Dr. Wojtkowiak is an interdisciplinary researcher specialized in the research, education, and advising in the field of existential and spiritual care with a focus on meaning making, ritual, life and death experiences, and grief.
Recently, she has been studying existential concerns at the start of life: what does our origin mean to us? What is the meaning of our beginning? What does it mean to bring life into the world? By comparing and contrasting existential concerns at birth and death she tries to unravel processes of meaning, with specific focus on embodiment and relationality. In the past, she has studied concepts of symbolic immortality (notions of a “postself”), ethics of end-of-life decision-making and the role of secular or personal spirituality. Other research interests are: identity theory, relational and narrative perspectives, ritual as intervention/method used in pastoral care, interdisciplinary research and mixed-methods.