The Death and Grief Research Collaborative (DGRC) brings together interdisciplinary and multigenerational researchers, students, trainees, volunteers, community partners, and people with lived and living experience of grief, palliative, and end-of-life care. Together, we seek to strengthen and advance community-based and public health-informed understandings of death, dying, and grief.
Our research centres on ensuring that care-related policies and practices reflect the experiences and priorities of the people who are affected by them. Key areas of focus include youth engagement in pediatric palliative and end-of-life care, person-centred hospice care, and fostering grief literacy across social settings, such as schools and workplaces.
We also seek to bring together research, education, and community engagement across generations. Young people are actively involved as advisors, co-researchers, and project partners. We also collaborate with patients, families, volunteers, healthcare providers, educators, and community organizers of all ages to turn knowledge into meaningful changes in policy and practice.
Land Acknowledgement
Members of the DGRC come from across Canada, with partners from around the world. We acknowledge and respect the Indigenous First Peoples who have called these lands home since time immemorial. We recognize and honour the diverse Inuit, Métis, and First Nations communities across Turtle Island whose enduring stewardship continues to shape the places where we live, work, and collaborate.
Many of us work in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral, unceded, and unsurrendered territory of the Mi’kmaq people, whose inherent rights are recognized in the Peace and Friendship Treaties. This series of treaties did not surrender Indigenous land, resources, or sovereignty to the British Empire, but instead established rules for an ongoing relationship between nations, which remains active to this day. In our work we uphold the fact that we are All Treaty People and we must work collaboratively to redress historical and ongoing settler colonialism, including, but not limited to, sustained efforts towards the 94 Calls to Action detailed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
We also recognize that African Nova Scotians are a distinct people who have existed and persisted on the traditional land of the Mi’kmaq for over 400 years. As part of this, we also recognize that African Nova Scotians hold distinct collective rights tied to the fifty-two land-based communities they settled in that became, and still are, historical Black communities. African Nova Scotians came to the province through enslavement or through fleeing enslavement elsewhere, and continue to experience structural, systemic, and individual violence. The DGRC honours their histories, legacies and contributions that have enriched that part of Mi’kma’ki known as Nova Scotia and across Turtle Island (Canada).
Institutions and Funders:
Dalhousie University, McGill University, University of Waterloo Renison University College, Health Canada,VOICE, CIHR, SSHRC
The Death and Grief Research Collaborative 