Fiona Hallinan will defend her doctoral research in the arts, titled: "A Table and a Body: Disclosing Ultimology, a Practice of Paying Attention to Endings".

The project, which takes the demolition of a church in Ireland as a primary case study, comprises a sculptural table, a film essay and written thesis. Understanding the notion of an “ending” as in metonymic relation to the process of dying, the project has been informed by ongoing research on practices of attending to death and has come to look to the wake as a guiding resource. The public defense, to be held around the table Fragment Mediation, will include a reading by Hallinan from a section of the thesis and a presentation of some gathered observations of the project.

By facilitating a collective or shared sense of presence with respect to an ending, the practice of Ultimology aims to generate a type of milieu, as described by Vinciane Despret in her book Our Grateful Dead, a certain atmosphere or environment where encounters which otherwise would not occur are made possible. Drawing from the framework of the wake and outlining certain key thematics that recurred in the research around it, the reading and presentation will outline how the Body and the Table were developed as two central points of reference for a practice of Ultimology which were then applied in case studies conducted in the research.

The project’s title refers to a particular image detailed by Henry Morris in a nineteenth century paper on wake traditions which describes a body laid out, not on a table, but within it, and this has become a guiding touchstone for Ultimology as a method for paying attention to endings. The body in this dyadic refers to a meaningful coming-into-presence with an entity that is ending, while the table refers to the way in which that entity may, if perhaps only fleetingly, be contained, held or carried as a focus of collective gathering.

The doctoral defense will take place on Tuesday, 4 November 2025 at Kunsthal Gent, Lange Steenstraat 14. The day’s program will unfold as follows:
17:00 – 19:30: Public Defense, beginning with a welcome by the committee chair (17:00–17:10), followed by Hallinan’s research presentation (17:10–17:40), and a question-and-answer session (17:40–18:55).
18:55 – 19:10: Closed committee deliberation and evaluation.
19:10 – 19:30: Proclamation of results and laudation by the supervisor and committee chair.
19:30: Reception.

The examination committee includes:

• Dr. Simon Van Damme (Chair of the Examination Committee, dean of the Associated Faculty of Arts)
• Prof. Dr. Nancy Vansieleghem (supervisor, LUCA School of Arts / KU Leuven)
• Prof. Dr. Mick Wilson (co-supervisor, HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg)
• Prof. Dr. Kristof Vrancken (LUCA School of Arts / KU Leuven)
• Prof. Dr. Tom Van Imschoot (LUCA School of Arts / KU Leuven)
• Prof. Dr. Sukhdev Sandhu (New York University)
• Danielle Van Zuijlen (curator and co-founder of Kunsthal Gent)

Image: Research Image, Making Dust, photography by Faolán Carey 2021