Social Research: An International Quarterly, DISRUPTING DEATH / Vol. 93, No. 3
Joseph E. Davis, William Hasselberge, Paul Scherz, Oz Frankel
Johns Hopkins University Press 2026
Paul Scherz, Our Lady of Guadalupe Professor of Theology and ND–IBM Tech Ethics Lab Program Chair at the University of Notre Dame, has guest edited the latest issue of the journal Social Research, focused on disruptions to the experience and processing of grief, and understandings of the afterlife.
Along with co-editors Joseph E. Davis, research professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, and William Hasselberger, associate professor at the Institute for Political Studies of the Catholic University of Portugal, Scherz authored the introductory article, writing, “In this special issue, we explore the technology and our changed circumstances, and we ask what disrupting conceptions of death through technology might mean for vital aspects of human self-understanding, mourning, care relationships, and the social order in which we are born, live, and pass away.”
The 10 articles included in the issue grew out of a workshop convened by Scherz and his co-editors in Lisbon, Portugal, from October 10-11, 2025. The gathering was supported by funding from the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab, housed at Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, as well as the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia and The Digital Ethics Laboratory at the Catholic University of Portugal, where the workshop took place.
The convening built on the co-editors’ observations about the rapid development of AI bots and the ways this emerging technology has changed the process of mourning a person’s death or loss.