Globalizing Palliative Care

About Us

Palliative care services are increasingly emerging in diverse cultural settings around the globe. Given the large cultural diversity in end-of-life care practices, we ask: How do global palliative care practices translate to various cultural contexts? How do they impact local notions of death and dying? And how, in turn, do culturally diverse practices of end-of-life care shape the practice of palliative care? This project studies the globalization and cultural mediation of palliative care practices, policies and discourses. Our ethnographic research focuses on three countries that are currently building a system of professional palliative care provisions:

Palliative care services are increasingly emerging in diverse cultural settings around the globe. Given the large cultural diversity in end-of-life care practices, we ask: How do global palliative care practices translate to various cultural contexts?

How do they impact local notions of death and dying? And how, in turn, do culturally diverse practices of end-of-life care shape the practice of palliative care?

This project studies the globalization and cultural mediation of palliative care practices, policies and discourses. Our ethnographic research focuses on three countries that are currently building a system of professional palliative care provisions:
Icon Indonesia_128x128px_web
Indonesia
India
Brazil

In Indonesia palliative care is most developed in a few large tertiary hospitals, but is currently including a growing number professional initiatives across the archipelago. Ethnographic research will focus mainly on Jakarta and Banda Aceh.

India has multiple promising palliative care programmes and initiatives, amongst others a successful community-based palliative care system in Kerala. Research for this project focuses on end-of-life care in the capital of India: New Delhi.

In Brazil, palliative care units and initiatives are concentrated in urban centers and mostly located in hospitals. The research will both take place in institutions and follow families in the home setting. Fieldwork will be carried out in the metropolitan context of Sao Paulo and smaller towns in southern Brazil.

News & Events

Natashe Lemos Dekker awarded Distinguished Women Scientists Fund

March 24, 2022 No Comments

Natashe Lemos Dekker has been awarded the Distinguished Women Scientists Fund 2021. This travel grant for female postdocs allows her to spend a period as a visiting fellow at the UCLA Department of Anthropology in the United States. Lemos Dekker will participate in the group ‘Mind, Medicine, and Culture’, which advocates a critical perspective on health and illness that would greatly benefit Natashe’s own research on end-of-life care. Lemos Dekker is one of the six 6 laureates who will receive the DWSF travel grant 2021-2022.

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Hanum Atikasari in panel discussion on end-of-life care for women with reproductive and breast cancer in Jakarta, Indonesia

March 23, 2022 No Comments

On Wednesday 23 March 2022, Hanum Atikasari was the speaker during the Raboan Discussion Forum on Navigating end-of-life care: an ethnography of women with reproductive and breast cancer in Jakarta, Indonesia. The event was organized by the Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities, Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She outlined her research plans and discussed ethical dilemmas in conducting end-of-life research.

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Institute of Cultural Anthropology 

and Development Sociology

 

Leiden University
Wassenaarseweg 52
2333 AK Leiden
The Netherlands
a.samuels@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
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