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.
Category Archives: policy
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.
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.
SAACY at Age UK
Delighted to have been invited to speak at the Age UK Influencing Division Briefing 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.
SAACY at Centre for Ageing Better
Delighted to have been invited to speak at Ageing Better Headquarters about our Policy Report, Shifting How We View the Ageing Process. The Report summarises findings from the one-day workshop that explored the value, feasibility and acceptability of shifting how we view the ageing process. The Report’s goal is to achieve attitudinal change to ageing, by moving away from a narrative of disease and decline towards the idea that ageing is a lifelong process of change.
Shifting How We View the Ageing Process
As part of The Sciences of Ageing and the Culture of Youth, we had run a Policy Lab together with the Policy Institute at King’s in Autumn 2022. The one-day workshop had brought together academic researchers from a range of disciplines, practicing clinicians, people with lived experience and representatives from the care sector, charities and the policy world to explore how valuable, feasible and acceptable it would be to shift how we view the ageing process. Read the full Policy Report here.
Making Ageing and Dementia Studies Matter outside the Academy
At the 8th Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellows Conference, one of the panels focused on ‘Developing careers in the arts and humanities’. I contributed with a presentation that explored tensions between research, and impact and engagement activities, based on my experiences of currently running a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship funded research programme on ageing, The Sciences of Ageing and the Culture of Youth.
Martina Zimmermann 