Academic Seminar – 12th June // Dr. Ariel Dempsey // “Hope at the End of Life: Dancing with Uncertainties.”

Academic seminars focus on early-stage research on questions at the intersection of Christian faith and scholarly enquiry. They are intended to be exploratory, generative for both presenter and participants, and accessible across disciplines.

In this talk, Dr Ariel Dempsey will open a discussion on uncertainties experienced on serious illness and end-of-life care and ways of finding hope in the midst of it.

Dr. Ariel Dempsey is a physician and scholar with a deep interest in how we navigate uncertainty in medicine, especially at the end of life. She is a postdoctoral fellow in Health and Christian Ethics in the University of Oxford Faculty of Theology and Religion. She earned her MD from Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and DPhil in Science & Religion from the University of Oxford. Her doctoral research developed the concept of Palliating Uncertainty—an approach grounded in the values of palliative care and shaped by the philosophy of pragmatism. Dr. Dempsey is also a member of the team that received the Oxford Vice-Chancellor’s Award in Teaching for the development of a Medical Humanities Curriculum at the Oxford Medical School. After postdoctoral work, she will pursue residency in psychiatry with a fellowship in palliative care.