Chapman and Hall/CRC Digital Afterlife: Death Matters in a Digital Age (Chapman & Hall/CRC Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Series)

Despite the range of studies into grief and mourning in relation to the digital, research to date largely focuses on the cultural practices and meanings that are played out in and through digital environments. Digital Afterlife brings together experts from diverse fields who share an interest in Digital Afterlife and the wide-ranging issues that relate to this. The book covers a variety of matters that have been neglected in other research texts, for example: The legal, ethical, and philosophical conundrums of Digital Afterlife The ways digital media are currently being used to expand the possibilities of commemorating the dead and managing the grief of those left behind Our lives are shaped by and shape the creation of our Digital Afterlife as the digital has become a taken for granted aspect of human experience. This book will be of interest to undergraduates from computing, theology, business studies, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and education from all types of institutions. Secondary audiences include researchers and postgraduate researchers with an interest in the digital. At a practical level, the cost of data storage and changing data storage systems mitigate the likelihood of our digital presence existing in perpetuity. Whether we create accidental or intentional digital memories, this has psychological consequences for ourselves and for society. Essentially, the foreverness of forever is in question. Maggi Savin-Baden is Professor of Higher Education Research at the University of Worcester. She has a strong publication record of over 50 research publications and 17 books. Victoria Mason-Robbie is a Chartered Psychologist and an experienced lecturer having worked in the Higher Education sector for over 15 years. Her current research focuses on evaluating web-based avatars, pedagogical agents, and virtual humans. About the Author Editor Bios   Maggi Savin-Baden is Professor of Education at the University of Worcester and has researched and evaluated staff and student experience of learning for over 20 years and gained funding in this area (Leverhulme Trust, JISC, Higher Education Academy, MoD). She has a strong publication record of over 50 research publications and 17 books which reflect her research interests on the impact of innovative learning, digital fluency, cyber-influence, pedagogical agents, qualitative research methods, and problem-based learning. In her spare time, she runs, bakes, climbs and attempts triathlons   Victoria Mason-Robbie (PhD CPsychol CSci AFBPsS FHEA) is a Chartered Psychologist with a range of research interests within the fields of Health Psychology and Education who has published widely in psychology, medical, and teaching journals. She is an experienced lecturer having worked in the Higher Education sector for over 15 years. Her current research focuses on evaluating web-based avatars, pedagogical agents, and virtual humans.   Author Bios   Elaine Kasket is a writer, speaker and counselling psychologist, a long-time scholar of death and the digital. She is the author of All the Ghosts in the Machine: Illusions of Immortality in the Digital Age and serves as Bereavement Lead for the Digital Legacy Association.   Mórna O’Connor is a final-year doctoral candidate at the Nottingham Centre for the Advancement of Palliative, Supportive and End-of-Life Care (NCARE) at the University of Nottingham. Mórna is interested in the role played by potentially vast and varied posthumous digital material in the negotiation of durable biographies and memories of the dead.   Carla Sofka is Professor of Social Work at Siena College.  She began writing about the impact of the Internet and technology on death education and grief counselling in the mid-1990’s, coining the term “thanatechnology” in 1996.  Her recent research has investigated the role of digital and social media in dealing with life-threatening and terminal illness, death, and grief.  In addition to co-editing a