Rethinking Ageing: Mobilising Research into Policy and Practice

Invited talk at the annual Warwick District Faiths Forum Wellbeing Conference, in October 2025.

Episodicity in Dementia and Ageing: Identities at Different Ages, and Pathways to Integrating into Policy and Practice an Expanded View of Narrative

Talk at the International Conference of the European Network of Ageing Studies and North American Network of Ageing Studies in Lleida, Spain, in April 2025.

Changing How We Think about Ageing: A Narrative Approach

In January 2025, I was invited to present in the online lecture series (Medical and Digital Humanities) of the Literature and Science Forum.

Working across Disciplines and Sectors

A talk at the FLFs on Ageing Workshop at King’s College London in November 2024.

Shifting How We View the Ageing Process

In April 2024, I was invited to InCommon to present about the SAACY Policy Report, Shifting How We View the Ageing Process.

Cognitive Augmentation in Speculative Writing

In April 2024, I spoke at the International Conference of Three Societies on Literature and Science at Birmingham. My talk explored anti-ageing discourse at the boundaries between predictive popular science and creative science fiction.

Changing How We Think about Ageing

In December 2023, I was invited to deliver the opening keynote at the annual conference of the German Studies Association of Ireland. 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.

The Sciences of Ageing and the Culture of Youth

In October 2023, I was invited to speak about SAACY at the Warwick District Faiths Forum Health and Wellbeing Conference.

Shifting How We View the Ageing Process

In October 2023, I was invited to Age UK to present about the SAACY Policy Report, Shifting How We View the Ageing Process.

Shifting How We View the Ageing Process

In September 2023, I was invited by Centre for Ageing Better to present about the Policy Report, Shifting How We View the Ageing Process, that arose from a Policy Lab we organised as part of the Sciences of Ageing and the Culture of Youth.

Making Ageing and Dementia Studies Matter outside the Academy

At the 8th Annual AHRC Fellows Conference (June 2023), I was invited to contribute to a panel on ‘Developing careers in the arts and humanities’. In my presentation, I explored tensions between research, and impact and engagement activities.

Narrating Older Age

In June 2023, I gave an invited seminar in the School of Life Course and Population Health Sciences at King’s, exploring barriers to accepting material changes of the body that come with ageing.

Life Narratives and the Biological Reality of Ageing

In March 2023, I was invited to speak in the Medical and Health Humanities Seminar Series at Trinity College Dublin, examining how life narratives confront the biological realities of ageing. You can listen to a podcast of the seminar following this link.

The Poetics and Politics of Alzheimer’s Disease Life-Writing

In November 2022, I was invited as guest lecturer in the REMIND (Real Experience and Memories in Care: Narrating Alzheimer Dementia) further education programme at ISTUD Healthcare and Wellbeing, Milan.

Agency, Personhood and Care in Dementia Literature

In October 2022, I spoke at the 7th Regional Medical Humanities Seminar, at the University of Kent, Maidstone Hospital, exploring representations of dementia in fiction and life-writing.

Literature and Dementia Care

In August 2022, I was invited to a Symposium on Ethics, Agency, and Personhood in Dementia at the University of Southern Denmark, Copenhagen, where I delivered a plenary lecture on ‘Literature and dementia care’ and contributed to a panel discussion on ‘The use of narrative medicine in dementia care’.

Dementia and the Bestselling Novel

In July 2022, I contributed to the Psychological Humanities and Narrative Medicine Summer School at the University of Trento, discussing with students the use of dementia as plot device and its implications for care.

The Normal and the Pathological in Old Age

In March 2022, I was invited guest speaker at a Versus Arthritis Musculoskeletal Disorders Research Advisory Group meeting in Chesterfield, speaking about ‘The Normal and the Pathological in Old Age: Arthritis and Dementia in Cultural Discourse’, reflecting on issues of normalization and pathologization in older age.

Ageing, Dementia, Care

In February 2022, I spoke at the Centre for Science and Policy at the University of Cambridge, exploring how a different perspective on ageing may inform care policy. You can read a summary of the seminar following this link.

A Conversation about Ageing

In a Conversations across the Medical Humanities event in November 2021, Senior Lecturer in Global Health and Philosophy at King’s, Sridhar Venkatapuram, and I discussed our work on ageing.

Hundred Years of Silence

In September 2021, I delivered a keynote at Amnesie d’autore: 1920–2020, un secolo di parole per raccontare l’amnesia, an international conference about memory loss at the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy.

Foucault for Physicists

In February 2021, I gave an invited seminar at the University of Warwick, speaking on ‘Discipline and Power in Cross-Faculty Teaching’, including reflections on the module Science in Context, which I had developed at the Institute for Advanced Teaching and Learning (IATL), when working at the University of Warwick.

Informal Dementia Care

In November 2020, I contributed to Thinking in Crisis Times, a collective exploration by the KCL English Department. My talk about ‘COVID-19, burning glass on the divide between policy and practice’ situated the ongoing care crisis within the wider context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tools of Care in the Dementia Detective Novel

In September 2019, I contributed to the Ageing, Illness, Care conference at the University of Huddersfield, exploring the agency of characters with dementia in detective fiction.

Time and Space in Dementia Fiction

In June 2019, I was invited to contribute to conversations on Care and/in the Community at Birkbeck. Follow this link for an account of the workshop surrounding twenty-first century social and spatial conditions of care.