Delighted to have contributed to a panel discussion on ‘Ageing Better’ at The Coming of Age Symposium at the Wellcome Trust, London, chaired by Pragya Agarwal, joining Aideen Young from the Centre for Ageing Better and Daniel Davies from University College London.
Category Archives: Health Sciences
A biological turn in the medical humanities
Thrilled to have been invited to the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Ageing and Care (CIRAC) at the University of Graz, Austria, to speak in the Health Humanities Lecture Series – arguing for a ‘biological turn’ in the medical humanities that integrates narrative and empowers policy.
SAACY at the Warwick District Faiths Forum
Excited to have been invited back to speak at the annual Warwick District Faiths Forum Wellbeing Conference. My talk explored rethinking ageing – why does it matter and how can we achieve it, in theory and practice.
Rethinking Ageing: The Film
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.
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.
Martina Zimmermann 