Publications

Health Humanities

Monographs:

The Diseased Brain and the Failing Mind. Dementia in Science, Medicine and Literature of the Long Twentieth Century (London: Bloomsbury, 2020); open access thanks to Wellcome Trust funding.

The Poetics and Politics of Alzheimer’s Disease Life-Writing (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017); open access thanks to Wellcome Trust funding.

Book Chapters:

Overcoming decline (in) narrative: Episodicity in dementia and ageing, in: Anna Elsner and Monika Pietrzak-Franger (eds.), Literature and Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024); open access, embargoed until 19 July 2024

Hundred years of silence: The voice of the patient in twentieth-century cultural dementia discourse, in: Roberto M. Danese, Margareth Amatulli and Riccardo Donati (eds.), Amnesie d’autore: Un secolo die parole e immagini per raccontare i disturbi della memory (1920–2020) [1920–2020: A century of words and images telling the story of amnesia] (Rome: Carocci, 2023).

Conclusioni: L’esperienza dell’Alzheimer: Una vista differenziata e collettiva [Conclusion: The full view of the lived experience of Alzheimer’s disease], in: Maria Giulia Marini, REMIND: Esperienze e memorie reali nella cura: Narrare la demenza nell’Alzheimer [REMIND: Real experiences and memories in care: Narrating dementia in Alzheimer’s disease] (Vercelli: Effedì, 2023).

‘Writing successful ageing? The aches and pains of illness narrative and life review’, in: Sarah Falcus, Heike Hartung and Raquel Medina (eds.), Bloomsbury Handbook to Ageing in Contemporary Literature and Film (London: Bloomsbury, 2023).

‘From a “care-free” distance? Adult sons about their parents with dementia: A cross-cultural enquiry’, in: Heike Hartung, Rüdiger Kunow and Matthew Sweney (eds.), Ageing Masculinities, Alzheimer’s and Dementia Narratives (London: Bloomsbury, 2022); open access.

‘Dementia and the politics of memory in fiction: from the condition as narrative experiment to the patient as plot device’, in: Irmela M. Krüger-Fürhoff, Nina Schmidt and Sue Vice (eds.), The Politics of Dementia: Forgetting and Remembering the Violent Past in Literature, Film and Graphic Narratives (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2022); open access.

‘Terry Pratchett’s Living with Alzheimer’s as a case study of late-life creativity’, in: David Amigoni and Gordon McMullan (eds.), Creativity in Later Life: Beyond Late Style (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019).

Research Papers:

  • An Agenda for the Medical Humanities and Ageing. History of the Human Sciences. First published online July 9, 2025.
  • Changing how we think about ageing: A narrative approach. Yearbook of the German Studies Association of Ireland 2024;18:93-97.
  • L. Hughes* and M. Zimmermann*. ‘Older adults’ perspectives, experiences, and expectations of ageing in England: A grounded theory study protocol.’ Social Science Protocols; 2023; 6:1-9; open access thanks to Edinburgh Diamond.
  • A. Britton and M. Zimmermann*. ‘Informal dementia care: The carer’s lived experience at the divides between policy and practice.’ Dementia: the international journal of social research and practice; 21(7):2117-2127; open access thanks to UKRI funding.
  • ‘Alzheimer’s disease metaphors as mirror and lens to the stigma of dementia.’ Literature and Medicine 2017; 35(1):71-97; open access thanks to Wellcome Trust funding.
  • ‘“Journeys” in the life-writing of adult-child dementia caregivers.’ Journal of Medical Humanities 2013; 34(3):385-397.
  • ‘Narrating stroke: the life-writing and fiction of brain damage’. Medical Humanities 2012; 38:73-77.
  • ‘Fictional and real-world revolutionary heroes in the history of psychiatric politics’. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 2012; 200(12):1017-1021.
  • ‘Dementia in life-writing: our health care system in the words of the sufferer’. Neurological Sciences 2011; 32:1233-1238.
  • ‘Deliver us from evil: carer burden in Alzheimer’s disease.’ Medical Humanities 2010; 36:101-107.

Teaching Papers:

  • ‘Integrating medical humanities into a pharmaceutical care seminar on dementia’. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education 2013; 77(1), article 16.
  • Burkhardt, … and M. Zimmermann*, ‘Literature and science: a different look inside neurodegeneration’. Advances in Physiology Education 2012; 36:68-71.

Online Book Reviews and Guest Blog Posts:

Health Sciences

27 publications (20 original research papers, 4 review articles, 2 teaching studies) in internationally peer reviewed journals, and 1 article for continuing professional education.