UoB Grief Seminar: Prof Carlo Leget & Dr Mai-Britt Guldin – Loss, grief & existential awareness
About the event
Our traditional understanding of loss and grief has been based on bereavement research but recent research suggests that we need to look more broadly. Prof Carlo Leget and Mai-Britt Guldin’s Integrated Process Model (IPM) of loss and grief (2023, 2024) offers this broader understanding. The IPM is integrative, bringing together approaches and models from five dimensions: physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and spiritual. It draws together existing theories and recent research, exploring what they can tell us about loss and grief.
The model underlines that loss and grief do not have a cure, solution, or endpoint. It invites grievers (and those who support them) to engage with the big questions of human existence: facing death while embracing life (physical); exercising freedom while taking responsibility (emotional and cognitive); admitting aloneness while seeking connectedness (social); and recognising meaninglessness while seeking meaning (spiritual).
In this seminar, Leget and Guldin will present the IPM and explore its potential for clinical practice and research. They will explain the background of the IPM and give examples of how to work with the model in practice.
Prof. Carlo Leget is professor, chair of Care Ethics, and research director at the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht, the Netherlands. From 2012-2022, he also held an endowed chair in ethical and spiritual questions in palliative care. He chaired the development of two sets of guidelines on spiritual care in palliative care (2010, 2018). From 2011-2019 he was vice-president of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) and co-founded and chaired the EAPC-taskforce on spiritual care.
Dr Mai-Britt Guldin is the Director of Center for Grief and Existential Values and a senior researcher at Aarhus University, Denmark. Trained as a psychologist, she is a clinical specialist in psychotherapy with more than 25 years of experience treating people who are navigating death, dying, and grief. She is a former professor and research-lead at University of Southern Denmark. Guldin is the author of six books, 16 book chapters, and more than 60 research papers. She has extensive organisational and management experience from many different boards and expert groups. For example, she was a member of the Board of Directors of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) from 2015-2019.
In 2023, Prof. Carlo Leget and Dr Guldin founded the Center for Grief and Existential Values in Aarhus, Denmark. The Centre’s research adopts an interdisciplinary and interprofessional perspective, developing scholarship and education that explore loss and grief as a window to existential awareness. Their latest book is Loss, Grief and Existential Awareness: An Integrative Approach (Routledge, 2024).
This event is part of a new seminar series organised by the Bristol Centre for Grief Research and Engagement, in association with the Good Grief Festival.
The seminar will be online and will be held in UK time (BST). We will send the link to all registered attendees around 24 hours before the start time. If you have any questions, please email: [email protected]