Press Releases
A Near Death Experience?
On Friday 16 April 2004, the ITV Wales discussion programme “On the Edge” featured the research of a University of Wales, Lampeter student, Penny Sartori. Penny, a part-time doctoral student, is a nurse in an Intensive Care Ward in Morriston Hospital, Swansea and has been given ethical approval to examine what happens when critically ill patients have a “near-death experience” (NDE). So far, Penny has individually followed up fifteen cases in her own ward as well as exploring data from other hospital researchers on accident and heart attack victims and other patients who have come close to death. Many people experiencing NDE describe floating above the resuscitation room, walking into a bright light in a loving atmosphere and seeing dead relatives before being told to “go back”.
The ITV programme started with an account of Penny Sartori’s work and findings to date. Then a women who had had a near-death experience described what she believed had happened to her when she was critically ill. This was followed by a panel discussion in which other researchers into NDEs from a variety of perspectives discussed the topic.
Penny is conducting this research as part of her doctoral thesis entitled “A Prospective Study of Near-Death Experiences in a Hospital Context”. The work is funded by the Life-Bridge Foundation of New York, and she is jointly supervised by Professor Paul Badham of the University of Wales, Lampeter and Dr Peter Fenwick, a consultant Neurophysiologist at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. Dr Fenwick is an internationally renowned authority on near-death experiences as well as President of the UK Branch of the International Association for Near-Death Studies.
Dr Fenwick will be visiting Lampeter on 5 May 2004 to talk on “Spiritual medicine and a changing view of death. He has also agreed to give his database on NDEs to Lampeter, which means that the Alistair Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre with the Department of Theology & Religious Studies will have the largest archive of NDEs in Britain.
If you have any personal reports of NDE or would like to know more about either this research or the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Centre, then please contact Penny care of Professor Badham at the address below.
The Alister Hardy Religious Research Experience Centre, which moved from the University of Oxford to Lampeter in 2000, was established to further the study of religious and spiritual experience. The archive now houses more than 6000 first hand accounts of contemporary religious experiences. Further information on the Centre is available at www.alisterhardytrust.org.uk/
With more than 30 full-time members of staff, the Department of Theology & Religious Studies in Lampeter is one of the premier places in the UK for the study of religion. The Department offers a diverse range of courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, with many degrees available through distance learning and open learning programmes. See www.lamp.ac.uk/trs/ for further information.
For further information, please contact:
Professor Paul Badham
Department of Theology & Religious Studies
Tel: 01570 424708
Email: p.badham@lamp.ac.uk
Postal Address: University of Wales, Lampeter, Ceredigion. SA48 7ED
Or for general information:
Dr Jane Norris-Hill
Tel: 01570 424799
Email: j.norris-hill@lamp.ac.uk
Postal Address: University of Wales, Lampeter, Ceredigion. SA48 7ED
Updated 20 April 2004
