Critical Dementia Studies

Richard Ward is Senior Lecturer in Dementia Studies at the University of Stirling and Head of Division for Ageing and Dementia. He is a registered social worker who specialised in working with older people living with dementia. Richard’s research interests include social care practice, the experience of living with dementia and how place-based experience can influence the lives of people with chronic and progressive conditions. Richard is part of a network of academics with a shared interest in studying the international development of dementia friendly communities. He is also the co-founder of the Critical Dementia Studies Network. His recently published book is Ward R, Clark A & Phillipson L (eds.) (2021) Dementia and Place: Practices, Experiences and Connections. Linn J. Sandberg is Associate Professor in Gender Studies and Senior Lecturer in the School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University, Sweden. Sandberg’s research interests are in the field of ageing, gender, sexuality, embodiment and dementia. Some of her most recent research interests include a qualitative interview study on sexual and intimate couple relationship after the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Currently she is the Principal Investigator of a project on LGBTQ people with dementia and Swedish dementia care, funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working life and Welfare (FORTE). Sandberg is the co-founder of the Critical Dementia Studies Network, (https://memoryfriendly.org.uk/programmes/critical-dementia-network/) together with Richard Ward, and a co-managing editor of the book series Dementia in Critical Dialogue.

Introduction: Why critical dementia studies and why now?

Part I: Reclaiming and recasting

1. I want to be the orchestrator of my entire fabulous life

2. Small quantities at a time: On music, poetry and social media

3. Who knew a pothole could bring it all back?

4. Nobody is allowed to offend us – not by language, nor by attitude

5. Recognizing Birkby: Living and caring with dementia

Part II: Re/framing

6. ‘Lost in time like tears in rain’: Critical Perspectives on Personhood and Dementia

7. Multi-Species Dementia Studies: How moving beyond human exceptionalism can advance dementia's more critical turn

8. Reframing 'ethnicity' in dementia research: Reflections on current whiteness of research and the need for an anti-racist approach

9. Frames of Dementia, grieving otherwise in The Father, Relic and Supernova: Representing dementia in recent film

Part III: Care and control

10. Precarity and Dementia

11. An Emerging Necropolitics of the Dementias

12. Segregation and Incarceration of People Living with Dementia in Care Homes: Critical Disability and Human Rights Approaches

13. The carnival is not over: cultural resistance in dementia care environments

Part IV: Forging alliances

14. Convergences, Collaborations, and Co-conspirators: The Radical Potentiality of Critical Disability Studies and Critical Dementia Studies

15. Thinking dementia differently: Dialogues between feminist scholarship and dementia studies

16. Revolutionising dementia policy and practice: Guidance from ‘the memory girl’, an accomplice

17. Taking a Queer Turn – the significance of Queer Theory for Critical Dementia Studies

18. Neurodiversity and dementia: Pitfalls, possibilities and some personal notes

19. Thinking back and looking ahead: Co-ordinates for critical methodologies in dementia studies