Explore how social media transforms mourning into a shared, public experience at this online symposium delving into the digital dimensions of loss and connection. This event brings together leading and emerging voices in social media research to examine how platforms like TikTok are reshaping grief narratives, fostering resilience, and creating meaningful communities.

The symposium features a keynote presentations from social media experts Associate Professor Moa Eriksson Krutrok of Umeå University, Professor Crystal Abidin from Curtin University, and Professor Johanna Sumiala from the University of Helsinki. They will offer insights into the unique affordances of TikTok and its role in public mourning and connection.

Join us for this thought-provoking event to explore the profound ways digital platforms are redefining how we cope, connect, and commemorate in times of personal and collective loss.

Join cross-disciplinary artist Annie Frost Nicholson in a talk and workshop to explore the role of contemporary public art and its ever-evolving relationship to ongoing contemporary crisis and societal change.

Annie Frost Nicholson (formerly The Fandangoe Kid) is a London-based interdisciplinary artist whose work seeks to smash taboos around the complexities of the human condition. Through a curious, colourful and considered lens, Frost Nicholson’s practice looks at what it means to be alive, and her preoccupation with life, death, grief and all their permeations follows her own devastating loss of family members twelve years ago, at the age of twenty-seven.