Workshop
The Digital Beyond. (Im)Mortality and Humanity between Data and AI
When? – June 26th 2026
Where? – Haus am Ostfriedhof, Munich
The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence is not only transforming how we live, communicate, and work, but is also fundamentally reshaping how we exist beyond death. Through the imitation of voices, the generation of text, and the reconstruction of images, AI enables unprecedented forms of post-mortem presence. Digital traces, data archives, and algorithmically generated identities are transforming the imagination of finitude, the organization of posthumous care, and the practices of communal and individual grief.
As AI systems become everyday companions in the face of loss, economic and political dimensions also come to the fore—particularly when the data of the deceased is subjected to capitalist exploitation or platform logics. For several years, a burgeoning interdisciplinary field has examined these transformations. Projects such as Ethics, Law and Security of Digital Afterlife (EdiLife), international consortia like Digital Death (DiDe), and recent research across Death Studies, Cultural Anthropology, STS, and Political Economy demonstrate the breadth of this discourse.
Our 1-day workshop "The Digital Beyond" aims to consolidate these perspectives, providing a forum for leading researchers to reflect on the transformations of death and digital memory. We focus on interdisciplinary exchange and the question of how the interplay of data practices, technologies, and affective relationships gives rise to new cultures of death, care, responsibility, and collective memory.