A grassroots initiative for young adults, run by young adults

The Living Room Collective

Peer-led death cafés for college and graduate students. Small groups, good food, and the conversation we're taught to avoid.

Bring the tour to your campus What happens in the room

Mixed-media portrait of a woman with blue hair holding a blue flower at her lips — Painted by Srin Lahiri (she/her). She is an artist, Duke neuroscience graduate, and a member of the LRC. Her work explores grief within lives still being lived.

What is The Living Room Collective?

The Living Room Collective is a grassroots initiative that draws from the global Death Café movement. We're run by young adults, for young adults.

We bring an invitation to talk about death and mortality. It's the most universal human condition there is, and yet we live in a death-phobic culture, one that teaches us to look away from what's uncomfortable.

Join the collective on Instagram ↗

Our offering

What happens in the room.

We gather in small groups over food and tea, with question cards to get things moving. The conversation is peer-led. There are no experts at the front of the room and no agenda, and anyone can pass.

It isn't therapy or a lecture. It's a space to sit with peers in the deeply human questions we all share.

A death café is an open conversation about death over something to eat and drink. It has no agenda and no conclusions to reach. It is not grief counseling or therapy. Learn more about death cafés ↗

Hosted by The Living Room Collective

Death Café College Tour

Partner with us to bring a death café, or a death café–inspired experience, to your campus. Every gathering is tailored to the community hosting it: who your students are, and what you hope the evening holds for them.

We're partnering with colleges and universities across Southern California for the 2026–27 academic year.

Partner with us · livingroomcoll@gmail.com

Two hours, with food and tea.
We open with ground rules: no judgment, respect, and silence is welcome.
Small groups, each with a peer who holds the space.
Question cards to start. After that, the conversation goes where students take it.
Open to any student. No experience with loss required.

Versions we've played with

Small circles: small groups with one conversation facilitator and very little structure.

Topic tables: one topic per table (personal loss, religion and the afterlife, why did you come), and people sit where they want to talk.

Games: a deck of question cards about death, mortality, and living and dying well.

A place to say out loud what many of them are voicing for the first time.
Conversation with peers outside their major and class year.
For pre-health students, an early look at their role in end-of-life care.

From our cafés at Duke University and Pomona College

The first two filled past capacity.Three death cafés at Duke University, 2024–25.
89% of participants said they would make time for another one.Duke's Death Café series, 2024–25

“Definitely didn't come out with an answer. If anything I have more questions!”

Senior

Quotes come from anonymous post-event surveys and are shared with consent.

Hi, I'm Jenna

I graduated high school during the pandemic and entered college unsure what a good life could look like in a world that was changing so fast. So I went searching. I switched majors, volunteered abroad, and somewhere along the way ended up studying death, and one question in particular:

What does it mean to die well?

Following that question, I interviewed 67 death doulas, non-medical professionals who help people die with more comfort and dignity. I volunteered in hospices and started going to death cafés.

It’s unusual. But thinking and talking about mortality is when I felt most honest, grounded, and connected to the people around me. My friends felt it too, and at every death café I was the only person under 30. So I started hosting them on campus.

I graduated Duke believing that making room for death can help us live more fully.

The Living Room Collective is an invitation, and permission, to lean into what we’re told to avoid.

Duke '25, Psychology · INELDA-trained death doula · Multi-method, interdisciplinary senior thesis: 67 interviews with INELDA-trained death doulas

Daughter, granddaughter, friend to many

Connect

Pull up a chair.

For colleges

Tell us about your campus through the interest form.

Interest form ↗

For students

Join the collective on Instagram.

@dinewithlrc on Instagram ↗

For everything else

Book a call, or email livingroomcoll@gmail.com.

Book a call ↗