2026 | Grief and Loss Interdisciplinary Cluster

This project brings together philosophers, theologians, psychologists, and psychiatrists from Oxford with researchers from Stanford University to rethink how we understand loss and grief. Grief is often treated as a problem to be managed so that individuals can "recover" their psychological wellbeing. This approach overlooks a crucial aspect of the human response to loss: grief is not only about the person who suffers the loss, but also about the person who has been lost and the relationship that continues to matter.

Much contemporary thinking about grief focuses on helping people move on, adapt, or build resilience. Although these aims are important, they can unintentionally reduce grief to a private psychological problem and neglect its moral, relational, and spiritual dimensions. This project starts from the idea that our wellbeing is deeply connected to our relationships with others, and that grief cannot be fully understood without taking seriously the ongoing significance of those relationships.

This framework is especially important in the advent of new digital technologies playing an increasing role in grief counselling as well as palliative and social care. The project is aimed both to think about how AI may be helpful in these spaces and to clarify what elements of experiencing grief and suffering ought best to remain fully human. The results of this project are hoped to not only advance the conceptual and clinical understanding of loss and grief but also impact social care policy as well as, regulation pertaining to the medical use of AI, in particular in the context death anxiety, anticipatory grief, or loss related depression.

This project is funded through the TORCH International Partnership Scheme.

TORCH International Engagement