This short film is a co-production with Reuben &Co (and animations by Camille Aubry) arising from The Sciences of Ageing and the Culture of Youth (SAACY). SAACY project partners featuring in this film are Age UK, Brixton Windmill, Centre for Ageing Better, and InCommon. Rethinking Ageing was filmed on location, at Lambeth Town Assembly Hall, in November 2024.
Category Archives: Health Sciences
An Agenda for the Medical Humanities and Ageing
Embedded in a historical account of the relation of the medical humanities to ageing, and an account of the history of age studies, this article asserts that the medical humanities need to invest their discipline-crossing capacity and knowledge base in ageing. They need to integrate the biological reality of ageing into their descriptive practices and accept biomedicine as a constructive agent in their future work on ageing. Published in the journal History of the Human Sciences, the article is available open access.
Literature and Science Forum
Delighted to have been invited to speak in the Winter Series: Medical and Digital Humanities of the Literature and Science Forum – about a narrative approach to changing how we think about ageing.
Breaking down barriers to opportunity
A great pleasure to have joined a panel at the Annual Conference of the Foundation for Science and Technology to discuss one of the five missions of the newly elected government. Topics covered seniority and mentoring, opportunities for older people in the workforce and more.
Save the date for the 2025 Conference of SLSAeu, European Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, 4-6 June 2025
SAACY will host the 2025 SLSAeu annual conference, ‘The Lifespan: Perspectives on Ageing and the Life Course from the Medical Humanities, the Health Sciences and Age Studies’.
The three-day conference will be held at King’s College London. We hope to provide limited hybrid options with a strong preference for papers to be presented in person. We are keen to foster conversations across disciplines within individual panels, encouraging contributions on lifespan/lifecourse approaches to ageing from disciplines such as Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Dementia Studies, Disability Studies, Epidemiology, Evolutionary Science and Medicine, Gender Studies, Geriatrics, Gerontology, Health Economics, Languages and Literatures, Narrative Medicine, Neuroscience, Philosophy, Postgenomic Sciences, Psychiatry, and Public Health.
The Call for Papers and further information on fees and bursaries will be circulated soon.
Confirmed plenary speakers and round table discussants include:
Sally Chivers, Trent University, Canada
Ulrike Draesner, Leipzig University, Germany
Des O’Neill, Trinity College Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Susan Pickard, University of Liverpool, UK
Oliver Robinson, Imperial College London, UK
Kavita Sivaramakrishnan, Columbia University, USA
Aagje Swinnen, Maastricht University, Netherlands
Panel Discussion on Literature and Science
Delighted to have been invited to contribute to the panel discussion on the online day of the International Conference of Three Societies on Literature and Science, on ‘Literature and Science: The State of the Field’, hosted by John Holmes and chaired by Lara Choksey, discussing with the Founding Chair of BSLS, Alice Jenkins, and Lecturer in Science Communication, Meghan Judge. Great to deliberate on challenge-led funding and on how the humanities can influence policy.
SAACY at InCommon
Delighted to have been invited to speak at an InCommon Lunch and Learn event about the Policy Report, Shifting How We View the Ageing Process, which summarises the Themes for Actions and Next Steps explored during a Policy Lab held in the framework of my research programme on The Sciences of Ageing and the Culture of Youth, funded by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.
Cognitive Augmentation in Speculative Writing
Delighted about the opportunity to present at the International Conference of Three Societies on Literature and Science at Birmingham, contributing to the panel on ‘Facing Mortality’ with reflections on anti-ageing discourse at the boundaries between predictive popular science and creative science fiction.
Foundation Future Leaders 2024
Delighted to have been accepted on the Foundation Future Leaders programme 2024 organised by the Foundation of Science and Technology. The programme brings together a cohort of around 30 mid-career professionals, with ten representatives each from the research community, industry and the public sector, including the civil service.
Keynote at GSA Ireland
In December 2023, I was invited to deliver the opening keynote at the annual conference of the German Studies Association of Ireland, which focused on the Medical Humanities this year. My talk explored the nexus between the culturally and medically prized concept of narrative and a culturally prevalent account of ageing as decline and loss.
Martina Zimmermann 