The Donner Institute Research Prize to Maija Butters
The Donner Institute for Research in Religion and Culture in Turku has decided to award Dr.Phil. Maija Butters the institute’s Research Prize for 2022. Her research is described as a “courageous and subtle study of a theme that has both scientific and societal relevance”, namely how dying persons meet their own mortality and how the environment supports them in this situation.
Maija Butters is rewarded for her book Death and Dying Mediated by Medicine, Rituals, and Aesthetics: An Ethnographic Study on the Experiences of Palliative Patients in Finland (University of Helsinki, 2021). The book has been presented as a doctoral thesis in the Study of Religions at the University of Helsinki. The thesis addresses the question of how Finns diagnosed with incurable cancer experience and negotiate life, death and dying. The focus is on speech and language as well as images and rituals associated with dying.
Butters’s unique research material has been created through ethnographic fieldwork and consists of participatory observation and interviews with patients in the terminal phase of palliative care during the years 2014–2017, at a hospice home and an oncology ward in a hospital. Photographic material, art and blog texts are also included in the material. Butters analyses the importance of place and rituals for the terminally ill patient, as well as discusses dying both in a cultural and in a biomedical context.
Butters rejoices at the award and thinks with warmth and gratitude of her research subjects:
“I received the news of the Donner Institute Research Prize during my work trip in Switzerland. I feel surprised and moved when I think about my research subjects. The research was born in dialogue with the dying: they let me get close, they opened up and shared a significant time and period of life with me. For me, the research project means far more than just the thesis it resulted in – the research involved long-standing relationships with these people that I will never forget. Therefore, I would like to dedicate this award to their memory.”
About the Donner Institute Research Prize
The Donner Institute’s research prize, worth 5,000 EUR, recognises outstanding research in the field of religion, conducted at a Nordic university. The prize has been awarded since 2010. This year, seven nominations were submitted by professors, supervisors, and researchers in the field.
The Board of the Institute notes the following in its prize motivation:
“The thesis is a phenomenological and an ethnographic study of how Finns, diagnosed with an incurable disease, experience and negotiate life, death and dying. The focus is on the talk of death and on rituals, both institutional and personal, in connection with dying – how the dying person meets his own mortality. It is an excellent study on the life world of dying people and meaning making in a secular environment.
The strength of the thesis is the ethnographic material that the author has created with patients in the terminal phase, partly in a hospice home and partly in an oncology ward in a hospital. In an empathetic way, yet with scientific distance, Butters analyses this sad theme. In the study, the patients’ illness and dying are placed both in a cultural and in a biomedical context. The analysis traces the research material very closely and the dying are given a voice. It is a courageous and subtle study around a theme that has both scientific and societal relevance.”
Butters’ award-winning book is available in the University of Helsinki’s Helda database: https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/323930