Monday
June 9th
Speakers Programme: 2025 Opening Day
A Celebration: Kindness in Motion, Looking Back, Reaching Forward
Paccar Theatre, Naughton Institute
A packed two hours of joyous celebration welcoming new and returning community, live and online. Inspirational activity developing from previous Creative Brain Week, and details of the week ahead in Dublin.
Tickets are free but capacity is limited. To ensure your place, please book in advance
4.00-6.00pm - Part 1 in this time slot
Creative Brain Week 2024 Recap and Look Ahead
Looking Forward to the week of Activating Kindness” with panellists:
- Iracema Leroi
- Nicholas Johnson
- Brian Lawlor
- Ian Robertson
- Dominic Campbell
Contributors
Dominic Campbell is leading the Creative Brain Week initiative. As Bealtaine Festival Director he steered its celebration of creativity and aging’s development over eight years. Formerly an Artistic Director of Ireland’s national celebration he transformed St Patrick’s Festival’s three shows into ninety growing production, managerial teams, financial support, engagement and impact.
Dominic went on to design and produce national celebrations marking the expansion of European Union in 2004 and Centenary celebrations for James Joyce. For “The Day Of Welcomes” delivering 12 simultaneous festivals pairing EU expansion countries with Irish towns and cities engaging 2,500 artists from 32 countries.
He mentored “celebration of ageing” festivals in Wales (Gwanwynn), Scotland (Luminate), and developed projects with partners in Australia and The Netherlands. In 2012 he established the first global conference on Creativity In Older Age opened by Irish President Michael D Higgins, replicating it in San Francisco (2018) and Kentucky (2019).
Recognized as a key cultural influencer in Ireland by The Irish Times and by First Avenue as a Key Influencer in Aging in the US, in 2016 he became an inaugural Atlantic Fellow for Equity and Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute a project between Trinity College Dublin and University of California San Francisco an ambitious worldwide program seeking social and public health solutions to reduce the scale and adverse impact of dementia. Currently developing an arts programme for the Irish Hospice Foundation as response to the pandemic and the Ageing Voices programme with Sing Ireland.
Website:
www.creativeaginginternational.com
www.gbhi.org/profiles/dominic-campbell
Social:
X: @CreativeAgeIntl and @CreativeBrainWk and @IrelandChorus
Nicholas Johnson is Associate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin, where he directs the Trinity Centre for Beckett Studies and convenes the interdisciplinary Creative Arts Practice research theme. His books include Beckett’s Voices / Voicing Beckett (Brill, 2021), Influencing Beckett / Beckett Influencing (L’Harmattan, 2020), Experimental Beckett (Cambridge UP, 2020) and Bertolt Brecht’s David Fragments (1919–1921): An Interdisciplinary Study (Bloomsbury, 2020). He co-edited the “Performance Issue” (23.1, 2014) and the “Pedagogy Issue” (29.1, 2020) of the Journal of Beckett Studies (Edinburgh UP). Directing credits include Virtual Play (2017–19) and world premieres of The David Fragments (2017), Enemy of the Stars(2015), and No’s Knife (Lincoln Center, 2015). He works as dramaturg with Pan Pan, OT Platform, and Dead Centre and facilitates theatre workshops internationally. He was elected a Fellow of Trinity College in 2021.
Websites:
https://tcd.academia.edu/NicholasJohnson
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/about/partners/beckett-centre.php
Social Media:
Professor Brian Lawlor (MD, FRCPI, FRCPsych, FTCD (Hon), DABPN) is Conolly Norman Professor of Old Age Psychiatry, and a Founding Director of the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College. He is a geriatric psychiatrist with an interest in dementia, late-life depression, loneliness and brain health. Brian has worked for over 30 years on developing services and delivering care to people with dementia. His research interests range from early detection and prevention to evaluating new treatments for dementia.
Websites:
https://www.understandtogether.ie
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/brian-lawlor
Social Media:
Iracema specializes in pragmatic interventions for cognitive and neuropsychiatric issues in neurodegenerative disorders, particularly Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. She leads the HRB-CTN Dementia Trials Ireland and was Chief Investigator for the EU-funded SENSE-Cog programme, exploring the links between hearing, vision, and cognition in older adults. She now heads the HRB-funded EMERALD Lewy research program, focused on advancing the diagnosis and care of Lewy body disease in Ireland. At St James’s Hospital, she established the ‘Mind and Memory’ clinic, supporting individuals with cognitive and behavioral issues related to Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia.Iracema is an academic geriatric psychiatrist with a special interest in pragmatic interventions for the cognitive and neuropsychiatric aspects of neurodegenerative disorders, particularly Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Iracema is also an accomplished open water swimmer, with swims including the 44km Manhattan Island Marathon.
Websites:
Ian Robertson is a Founding Director of the Global Brain Health Institute and Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. He is co-leader of the BrainHealth Project (Center for BrainHealth UTDallas) and is a Member of Academia Europaea and of the Royal Irish Academy. He is widely known for his research on neuropsychology and his science writing has included books aimed at the general reader: Mind Sculpture (2000), The Mind’s Eye (2003), Stay Sharp (2005), The Winner Effect (2012) and The Stress Test (2016), all of which have been widely translated. His most recent book How Confidence Works was published by Penguin in 2022.
Websites:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/ian-robertson
Social:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-robertson-4480502/
4.00-6.00pm - Part 2 in this time slot
Looking Around the world at other Creative Brain Weeks
Looking Around the world at other Creative Brain Weeks: News of six “thematically connected, locally informed” Creative Brain Week’s inspired by Dublin, delivered in Argentina, Australia, Botswana, Egypt, India, Singapore by extraordinary collaborative effort over the last 12 months
The panel includes
- Egypt- Mohamed Salama (online)
- Botswana – Lingani Mbakile-Mahlanza (online)
- India – Anusha Yasoda-Mohan, Jayashree Dasgupta (in person and online)
- Australia – Kim Nguyen and Juanita Wheeler (online)
- Singapore – Cissie Fu (online)
- Argentina – Alejandra Davidziuk and Agustín Ibáñez (online and in person)
Contributors
Dominic Campbell is leading the Creative Brain Week initiative. As Bealtaine Festival Director he steered its celebration of creativity and aging’s development over eight years. Formerly an Artistic Director of Ireland’s national celebration he transformed St Patrick’s Festival’s three shows into ninety growing production, managerial teams, financial support, engagement and impact.
Dominic went on to design and produce national celebrations marking the expansion of European Union in 2004 and Centenary celebrations for James Joyce. For “The Day Of Welcomes” delivering 12 simultaneous festivals pairing EU expansion countries with Irish towns and cities engaging 2,500 artists from 32 countries.
He mentored “celebration of ageing” festivals in Wales (Gwanwynn), Scotland (Luminate), and developed projects with partners in Australia and The Netherlands. In 2012 he established the first global conference on Creativity In Older Age opened by Irish President Michael D Higgins, replicating it in San Francisco (2018) and Kentucky (2019).
Recognized as a key cultural influencer in Ireland by The Irish Times and by First Avenue as a Key Influencer in Aging in the US, in 2016 he became an inaugural Atlantic Fellow for Equity and Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute a project between Trinity College Dublin and University of California San Francisco an ambitious worldwide program seeking social and public health solutions to reduce the scale and adverse impact of dementia. Currently developing an arts programme for the Irish Hospice Foundation as response to the pandemic and the Ageing Voices programme with Sing Ireland.
Website:
www.creativeaginginternational.com
www.gbhi.org/profiles/dominic-campbell
Social:
X: @CreativeAgeIntl and @CreativeBrainWk and @IrelandChorus
True to her mental health activism ethos, she is actively involved with the International Neuroethics Society and ethics research projects as well.
Holding a PhD in clinical psychology from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, she cherishes the privilege of listening to others’ stories as a therapist.
Website:
https://neurologyacademy.org/profiles/dr-jayashree-dasgupta
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/jayashree-dasgupta
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jayashree-Dasgupta
Social:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayashreedasgupta/
Instagram – @dr.jayashreedg
Alejandra Davidziuk holds a Lic. in Communication Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a M.A. in International Affairs from The New School, New York, with a concentration in social and economic development. She is currently taking a doctorate program in Social Science at the IDES-UNGS (Argentina). She has over ten years of progressive experience as journalist, researcher, project manager, and outreach officer with special focus on virtual and onsite communication strategies and community relationship building. This experience is essential to her daily work at the international cooperation field, where she is actively involved since 2007. She is currently the Outreach Manager at the Latin American Institute of Brain Health (BrainLat) at the Adolfo Ibáñez University (UAI).
Website:
Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alejandra-davidziuk-1031251/
Dr Cissie Fu is a political theorist and co-founder of the Political Arts Initiative which is interested in the ways in which people interact and compose political ideas and actions through technology and the arts.
Born in Hong Kong, Cissie studied, taught, curated and performed across cultural and educational institutions in Asia, Europe, the UK, and the Americas and most recently as Dean of the Faculty of Culture and Community at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Canada.
With a forthcoming open textbook on cultural production and the law, Cissie is currently completing a monograph on the politics of silence, which draws from artistic practices to resuscitate silence as a positive political concept. Cissie’s practice-led research interests in relational aesthetics and decolonial action, combined with her experiments in experiential and transformative organisational design, inform her approach to institution-building as a creative, critical and communal cultural practice.
Website:
https://www.lasalle.edu.sg/schools/mcnally-school-of-fine-arts
Social Media:
X: @lasallesg
Agustín Ibáñez is a neuroscientist interested in global approaches to dementia and social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience. He is the Director of Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat) at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI) in Chile. He also holds international positions from the USA/Ireland [Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at the University of California San Francisco and Trinity College Dublin)] and Argentina [Cognitive Neuroscience Center]. Agustín holds a track record of +300 publications (+120 in the last five years), including top-ten journals (e.g., Lancet Neurology, World Psychiatry, Nature Reviews Neurology, Nature Human Behavior, JAMA Neurology, Alzheimer’s & Dementia, Brain, Neuron). He has received funding from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), ANID (Chile), COLCIENCIAS (Colombia), DAAD (Germany), MRC (United Kingdom), CONICET (Argentina) and Alzheimer’s Association, Tau Consortium, GBHI, Takeda, and NIH/NIA (USA). He is the founder of critical regional initiatives, such as the multi-partner consortium to expand dementia research in Latin America (ReDLat) and the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium on Dementia (LAC-CD). His work has been highlighted in the BBC, Nature, Nature News, Discovery Channel, Popular Science, Daily Mail, Newsweek, Le Monde, and Oxford University Press, among others.
Websites:
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6758-5101
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/agustin-ibanez-0
Social:
https://twitter.com/AgustinMIbanez
https://www.instagram.com/dr.agustinibanez/
Lingani has an appointment at the University of Botswana as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the psychology department and as coordinator of the psychology clinic. She has a special interest in neurodegenerative conditions, traumatic brain injury, and training in neuropsychology.
Lingani is also an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute.
Website:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/lingani-mbakile-mahlanza
Social:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lingani-mbakile-mahlanza-5b7770154/
Kim-Huong applies economic theories and methods to assess the social and economic values of healthcare and social services. She designs policies and programmes to optimise the value of health and social care and to improve equitable access and use for disadvantaged groups.
Her interests encompass brain health in older adults and those with brain injuries, as well as evaluation methods in Creative Health for resource allocation. She works closely with advocates, health and social service consumers, policy analysts, and researchers from diverse backgrounds, including medical professionals, artists, industry organizations, and peak bodies.
Kim-Huong is a Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute, Trinity College Dublin and University of California, San Francisco. She holds a PhD in Applied Econometrics in Health from the University of Queensland (Australia).
Currently, she is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia) and leads the Health Economics and Health Services Research portfolio at the Queensland Brain Injury Collective.
Before her academic career in Australia, she was a development analyst for international agencies providing foreign development aid to Vietnam.
Kim-Huong is also a Global Atlantic Fellow with the Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College Dublin and the University of California, San Francisco.
Websites:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/kim-huong-nguyen
https://researchers.uq.edu.au/researcher/20210
Social:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-huong-nguyen-64850663
Mohamed is a professor at the Institute of Global Health and Human Ecology at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI). Additionally, he is a member of the steering committee of the International Parkinson’s Disease Genome Consortium (IPDGC)- Africa and the Scientific Committee of the Egyptian National Genome Project
Websites:
https://www.aucegypt.edu/fac/mohamed-salama
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/mohamed-salama
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mohamed-Salama-39
Social:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohamed-salama-311a4458/
Full & Frank’s Founder, Juanita Wheeler, is known for her strategic mind, her ability to inspire, and her trademark style of delivering insights and advice in a manner best described as comprehensive but blunt (or full & frank).
Juanita has over two decades of experience, devising and implementing strategic solutions for a broad range of organisations. She has amassed experience as a nonprofit CEO, a board member, a global marketing and market development specialist, a political strategist, political and corporate negotiator, speechwriter, speaker and speaker coach.
Juanita has been delivering speeches, presentations, pitches and keynotes, for more than twenty years, including her own TEDx Talk. So she knows what works, whether it’s in a 1:1 pitch meeting, in a boardroom with ten people or on stage in front of 10,000.
In 2013 Juanita left the multinational corporate world behind and formed her own company, Full & Frank.
Through Full & Frank’s online courses and coaching services, Juanita helps executives, entrepreneurs, thought leaders and changemakers to develop and deliver high impact presentations, worthy of their great ideas. This naturally complements Juanita’s side-hustle roles as the Executive Director of TEDxBrisbane, and an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Queensland, where she lectures in the art & science of presenting.
Juanita says “Bad presentations are the place good ideas go to die.” She’s determined to ensure no great idea is lost to the world due to an absence of strong presentation skills.
In addition to her years of experience, Juanita holds a Bachelor of Arts, an Executive MBA, a Master of Business (Philanthropy & Nonprofit Studies) and is currently completing a Master of Social Change Leadership.
Juanita is a Lifelong Fellow with the Atlantic Fellows program, managed by the Atlantic Institute based at Oxford University. The global program unites and supports fellows from across the globe, dedicated to accelerating the eradication of inequities for fairer, healthier and more inclusive societies.
Juanita is a (madly besotted) partner to husband Rob, proud mother of three twenty-something sons, dog-mum to Australian labradoodle Gromit, and a former teen mum.
An introvert by nature, Juanita likes to spend her ‘spare time’ watching TED Talks, colour coding her bookshelves using Pantone colour charts, and identifying native plants indigenous to her local catchment to plant in her backyard. She says she finds it relaxing.
In 2021, Juanita delivered a keynote address as part of International Women’s Day celebrations. Read the article based on her address here – 10 things I wish I had known a little sooner.
Websites:
LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/fullandfrank
Social:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juanitawheeler/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fullandfrank/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fullandfrank
Dr. Anusha Yasoda-Mohan is a Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health and a Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience and School of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. She is also a trained classical Bharathanatyam and Bollywood dancer. In addition to studying phantom auditory perception using experimental psychology, neuromodulation and neuroimaging, Anusha is immensely passionate about the performing arts which enables her to resonate and collaborate with both artists and scientists. Her diverse and multicultural experience through her national and international travels as both a performing artiste and researcher shapes her persona and inspires her ongoing work of marrying the two seemingly different worlds. She is Director of the International Tinnitus Research Initiative Foundation’s dissertation and communication wing (TRI Academy), which strives to take tinnitus research and clinical practices to the wider tinnitus research community. She is also the co-developer of BrainFM – an education and awareness tool aimed at making complex concepts about the brain accessible through dance while also building community. Additionally, Anusha leads a community for people living with tinnitus in Ireland called Tinnitus Eire (www.tinnituseire.ie) through which she strives to bring a sense of community and belonging for tinnitus sufferers. These tie together with her vision to leverage the arts as a medium to both comprehend and communicate the working of the brain.
Google Scholar:
https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=GxPjtv4AAAAJ&hl=en
Social:
Instagram: @nushmo90
Facebook: @Anusha.mohan.39
LinkedIn: @AnushaYasoda-Mohan
4.00-6.00pm - Part 3 in this time slot
Looking Back at what we have achieved already
Inspirational rapid updates on extraordinary Brain Health positive initiatives inspired by Ireland around the world
The panel includes
- Brain Health policy goes global – Harris Eyre
- Africa Down Syndrome Network – Eimear Mc Glinchey
- Acquired Brain Injury – Gráinne McGettrick
- WHO/Jameel Arts and Health Lab, and Lancet Specials – Nisha Sajnani
- Keepsake Chronicles – Alex Kornhuber and Kate Irving
Contributors
Dominic Campbell is leading the Creative Brain Week initiative. As Bealtaine Festival Director he steered its celebration of creativity and aging’s development over eight years. Formerly an Artistic Director of Ireland’s national celebration he transformed St Patrick’s Festival’s three shows into ninety growing production, managerial teams, financial support, engagement and impact.
Dominic went on to design and produce national celebrations marking the expansion of European Union in 2004 and Centenary celebrations for James Joyce. For “The Day Of Welcomes” delivering 12 simultaneous festivals pairing EU expansion countries with Irish towns and cities engaging 2,500 artists from 32 countries.
He mentored “celebration of ageing” festivals in Wales (Gwanwynn), Scotland (Luminate), and developed projects with partners in Australia and The Netherlands. In 2012 he established the first global conference on Creativity In Older Age opened by Irish President Michael D Higgins, replicating it in San Francisco (2018) and Kentucky (2019).
Recognized as a key cultural influencer in Ireland by The Irish Times and by First Avenue as a Key Influencer in Aging in the US, in 2016 he became an inaugural Atlantic Fellow for Equity and Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute a project between Trinity College Dublin and University of California San Francisco an ambitious worldwide program seeking social and public health solutions to reduce the scale and adverse impact of dementia. Currently developing an arts programme for the Irish Hospice Foundation as response to the pandemic and the Ageing Voices programme with Sing Ireland.
Website:
www.creativeaginginternational.com
www.gbhi.org/profiles/dominic-campbell
Social:
X: @CreativeAgeIntl and @CreativeBrainWk and @IrelandChorus
Dutch born Artist, Writer and Puppet Designer Corina Duyn trained as a nurse and social care worker before becoming a full-time artist after moving to Ireland in 1989. The rapid decline in her health with the onset of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) in 1998, aged 36, changed Corina’s creative ability, intensity and output. Portrayal of life around her changed to exploring the inner world of illness, in order to understand this utterly changed existence. Creative highlights in recent years include facilitating Life Outside the Box puppet project (2015), keynote speaker at Broken Puppet Symposium on Puppetry, Disability and Health (2018) and the Invisible Octopus video poem (2020), an extraordinary and succinct illustration of life with ME. The need to move into long term care in 2021 further influenced her creative output, including now accepting use of her co-artist’s hands to bring ideas into being.
Harris believes the world is increasingly relying on brain capital, where a premium is put on brain skills and brain health (e.g. individual’s cognitive, emotional, and social brain resources).
Investing in building brain capital is fundamental to meet modern societal challenges and to drive innovation.
Harris leads the development of the brain capital framework and seeks to place it at the center of economics, policy, finance and technology. He achieves his aims by “silo smashing” between neuroscience, medicine, business, economics, technology, diplomacy, social sciences, and the arts.
In his career, he has operated as a physician, scientist, entrepreneur, executive services provider, author, new economic and finance thinker, and neuroscience diplomat.
His key positions are:
- Lead for the Brain Capital Alliance, a public-private-people partnership advancing brain capital activities in policy, economics and investing. This work has been profiled in the New York Times, Newsweek, Neuron, Forbes, PwC, FT, STAT, the Financial Post, neo.life and the Australian Financial Review
- Co-lead of the OECD “Neuroscience-inspired Policy Initiative” (NIPI).
- Senior Fellow with the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute
- Fellow with the Center for Health and Bioscience, The Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University
- Chief Medical Officer of PRODEO, a brain health technology executive services group. He has co-led major commercial contracts, product development, dilutive and non-dilutive capital raising efforts
- Advisor to the Heka Fund, Brain Health Nexus, the Texas Medical Center Innovation Institute, the Euro-Mediterranean Economists Association and the Tropical Brain and Mind Foundation
- Member of the Champion’s Cabinet of the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative and a member of Project Value Alzheimer’s Europe (PAVE)
- Adjunct with the Global Brain Health Institute, Baylor College of Medicine, BrainLat, Deakin University and the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston (UTHealth)
Career highlights:
- Alumnus of Forbes 30 Under 30 and the Fulbright Scholar program
- Awardee of the EB1A Green Card, an honor typically reserved for Nobel and Pulitzer prize winners
- Author of 140+ papers with 1000s of coauthors
- Lead editor of the book ‘Convergence Mental Health’ (Oxford University Press)
He is from the Great Barrier Reef region of Australia and is now based in the USA.
Websites:
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Brain-health-directed-policymaking_Final.pdf
Social Media:
Kate is a Professor of Clinical Nursing, Dublin City University and she cares for her mother with dementia. For Kate as an academic and nurse, stories are data with a soul that help her connect to patients and relatives.
She completed her PhD in 2001 at Curtin University of Technology, Western Australia. This thesis was entitled: Case studies in restraint use. Kate has a significant leadership role Irish dementia policy development and successfully led the national Dementia training initiative: Dementia Skills Elevator, aiming to develop dementia skills capacity in services and communities. Kate has led several European research consortiums in dementia prevention and approaches to care and support. Kate currently teaches the practice development module in Dementia and Ethics in Nursing on the under graduate curriculum.
Website:
https://www.dcu.ie/snpch/people/kate-irving
Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-irving-08b6a521/
X: @IrvingKate
Instagram: @kateirving24
Alex is a documentary photographer, specializing in intimate, human stories. He uses still photography, video and sound to capture the essence of those transitory and profoundly human moments. For Alex, stories are a way to create empathy by connecting people.
Born and raised in Lima, Alex became interested in photography during his university studies at Ohio University in the United States where he graduated with a BA in Fine Arts.
In 1998 Alex left Peru to pursue a career as a freelance photojournalist, spending two years covering the war in Kosovo before relocating to Zurich, Switzerland. In Zurich, Alex covered stories in Latin America, Africa and Switzerland for newspapers and magazines such as Du, Tages Anzeiger Magazine and Spiegel. He also photographed a project on diverse Latino groups that was exhibited in Zurich, Lima, Santiago de Chile and Buenos Aires.
In 2004 Alex returned to Lima and began exploring the beauty of Peru most notably “Faces of Peru,” a lyrical document of the country’s people and photographed the culture of Pisco, Peru’s famous grape brandy. Alex is one of the founders of Hidden Planet Expeditions and is a photography expert/coach on many of the trips.
Alex is an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute and is fluent in Spanish, English and Brazilian Portuguese.
Websites:
https://www.alex-kornhuber.com
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/alex-kornhuber
Social Media:
Grainne is the Policy and Research Manager with Acquired Brain Injury Ireland where she leads the strategic development of the organisation’s policy and research agenda. With a background at the intersection of policy, research, and advocacy in the Irish NGO sector, Gráinne is dedicated to addressing health inequalities and championing the human rights of those facing exclusion due to ageing, dementia and disability. She has played a key role in leading successful national policy advocacy campaigns, forming alliances and coalitions, engaging stakeholders, and fostering collaborations at national, European and international levels. Gráinne is a Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health, Global Brain Health Institute, Trinity College Dublin. She holds a Bachelor of Social Science degree and a Master of Arts in Social Policy.
Websites:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/grainne-mcgettrick
Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gráinne-mcgettrick-77129121/
X; @ABIIreland and @GBHI_Fellows
Dr. Eimear McGlinchey is an Assistant Professor in Intellectual Disability in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, and a Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute, focused on identifying early biomarkers of dementia for people with Down syndrome by developing an intervention program using online cognitive training with adults with Down Syndrome.
Eimear’s background is in Psychology and her primary area of interest is in the promotion and maintenance of brain health in people with an intellectual disability, with particular focus on the area of dementia in people with Down syndrome. Eimear’s work in the area of dementia and Down syndrome includes investigating early biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease using neuroimaging, blood- based and cognitive biomarkers and is PI of the PREVENT dementia – DS project. This project is part of a collaborative international study with the Horizon 21 European Down syndrome Consortium. Dr McGlinchey is co-PI on a project that includes the voices of people with an intellectual disability in developing guidelines for post-diagnostic dementia support.
Eimear’s work is based in the Trinity Centre for Ageing and Intellectual Disability and is research lead with the National Intellectual Disability Memory Service. Her other areas of interest include equity and inclusion as well as accessibility and innovative dissemination.
Eimear teaches on the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in the school and provides supervision to undergraduate, masters and PhD students. She is Program Director for the Ageing Health and Wellbeing in Intellectual Disability MSc, the Dementia MSc, and the Community Health MSc in the School of Nursing and Midwifery. She has a number of publications and has disseminated widely through national and international conferences.
Websites:
https://www.tcd.ie/tcaid/people/mcgline/
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/eimear-mcglinchey
Social:
Nisha Sajnani is the founding co-director of the Jameel Arts & Health Lab, a collaboration with Community Jameel, the World Health Organisation (WHO), New York University (NYU) Steinhardt and CULTURUNN
Website:
https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/people/nisha-sajnani
Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nishasajnani/
X: https://twitter.com/NishaSajnani
4.00-6.00pm - final session in this time slot
The Pratchett Prize - Announcement
Inspired by the life and work of author Terry Pratchett, this award now in its second year, acknowledges the contribution of a scientist, artist, activist, or person living with dementia who, collaboratively or individually, works to reduce its impact.
Natasha Duffy of Sofft Productions, producer of “An Old Song Half Forgotten” project, which was the recipient of the inaugural prize, share details of the project’s progress and lives of Bryan Murray (actor living with dementia) and Deirdre Kinahan (playwright).
In the spirit of Terry Pratchett’s literary and personal work, the “adjudicating wizards” awarding the Prize seek humour and wit in art and science, kindness, creativity and curiosity, playfulness, attention and dedication, in equal measure. The winner of this year’s award will be announced by James Hadley on the night and details published here.
Terry Pratchett & Trinity College Dublin
Pratchett did not go to university. He left school early so as to start working as a journalist, having been offered the job. After working for some time as a journalist, he started writing fiction in his spare time. He took his first book to Trinity graduate, Colin Smythe, who owned a small publishing House (Colin Smythe Limited). Smythe published Pratchett’s first few books himself, and then became Pratchett’s literary agent when larger publishers (Gollancz and later Penguin Random House) took over publishing his work.
Smythe began donating copies of all Pratchett’s books in all published languages to Trinity, Liverpool and Senate House Library (University of London). This collection continues to grow today, being represented by all 41 of Pratchett’s Discworld novels, several other novels, children’s books and other books, and all their translations into at least 40 languages. At last count (just before the pandemic), this collection was over 2000 items strong.
Pratchett was awarded an honorary doctorate by Trinity in 2008 for his services to Literature.
He created a bursary to facilitate a student exchange between Dublin and Adelaide each year
In 2010, Pratchett was made an Adjunct Lecturer in Creative Writing at Trinity. You can view his inaugural speech (the importance of being amazed by absolutely everything), here.
He came to Trinity regularly. There’s also a nice talk on the Science of the Discworld, which he gave in the Science Gallery, here.
Pratchett Project
The Project was set up in 2018, when the library approached us about the collection and asked whether there would be any interest in it for literary translation students. Since then, each culture night we have brought together anyone from any discipline or inter-discipline whose work has intersected in some way with the life and/or work of Terry Pratchett. We have welcomed speakers from topic areas including: literary studies, digital humanities, translation studies, library studies, theatre studies, and neuroscience. Many of the talks that have been given in the past are available on YouTube here.
In the summer of 2020 (during the pandemic), we held an international conference online, which took the same principle. Anybody from any discipline or inter-discipline was welcome, provided their work was related to Pratchett’s life and/or work in some way.
Since 2021, the Project has been working to attract funding to support its work. We are hoping to digitise the whole collection and place it into a non-consumable database, so that researchers would be able to interrogate it without compromising copyright law. Pratchett was famously fascinated by technology.
Pratchett became one of the most vocal advocates for supporting research into Alzheimer’s Disease after being diagnosed in 2007. He continued this advocacy until his death in 2015. The Pratchett Project has taken up his mantel in this respect.
He was also a passionate advocate for the natural environment and assisted death.
We have attracted funding to cover a PhD candidate working at the forefront of Alzheimer’s Disease research, who has engaged heavily with the Project throughout his project.
We have also been applying for external funding to allow us to support a whole inter-disciplinary team of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers who would aim to dispel the stigma associated with Alzheimer’s Disease.
At this stage, the Project is an umbrella for people with an interest in Pratchett’s life and work to interact irrespective of disciplinary boundaries.
In the future, we intend to take this passive approach and make it active, by driving forward a new conception of doctoral and postdoctoral training which builds on the skill sets that people in diverse disciplines have, but which do not necessarily travel easily across disciplinary boundaries. We have tested this concept recently with the PhD candidate in neuroscience, who has also needed to learn new skills associated with literary interpretation and communication with a general audience.
The Prize
The Pratchett Prize is a new initiative which folds into Create Brain Week, and cementing the growing importance of neuroscience and Brain Health more generally to the Pratchett Project. The prize is awarded each year to an individual or group that has had a material effect on challenging the stigma associated with Alzheimer’s Disease, and/or has had a material effect over the lives of people living with the disease.
While there will be a bust of Terry Pratchett awarded on the night as part of the ceremony, the main prize is symbolic. The winner has done something for the greater good that deserves recognition.
Contributors
James Hadley’s research is representative of his wide-ranging interests, many of which centre on translation in under-researched cultural contexts, particularly in East Asia. James is active in developing theoretical mechanisms for the analysis of indirect translations. He is also active in Literary Machine Translation and Computer Assisted Literary Translation research, and in integrating Digital Humanities methodologies and empirical research into Translation Studies. James also coordinates the Pratchett Project, which brings together research from all fields which is in some way related to the life and/or work of Terry Pratchett.
Website:
https://www.tcd.ie/literary-translation/people/jhadley.php
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/James-Hadley-3
Social Media:
SoFFt Productions is a creative collaborative team, established in 2020 and based in Dublin, Ireland. The SoFFt team develops exceptional and innovative work in the spaces of arts, cultural and creativity for Irish and international audiences. The team is committed to designing, developing and delivering meaningful work in multidisciplinary arts practice from concept development, through programme creation and curation, to production – an end-to-end model of production for both live and online experiences.
Website:
https://www.sofftproductions.com/
Social Media:
X: @SOFFTProd
Facebook: @SOFFTProductions
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/sofftprod
6.00-7.30pm
Creative Brain Week Exhibition Opening
A first look at the exhibition of creative work accompanying the fourth Creative Brain Week. Featuring a performance by The Bleeping Interns Choir, founded by Dr Anne Marie O’Dwyer and introduced by Dr Oana Deac.
Dr Sarah Wrigley in conversation with Ian Roberston shares the backstory to the exhibition “A Time Otherwhere” featuring the work of John Kelly and Christina Todesco-Kelly
Contributors
Professor Anne-Marie O’Dwyer is a clinical professor and psychiatrist with almost four decades of clinical experience. Her responsibilities have included training medical students in psychiatry as well as providing teaching for post-graduate students in courses such as Translational Oncology. She studied medicine at TCD and, after qualifying as a doctor, initially trained in hospital medicine at the Trinity Federated Voluntary Hospitals scheme in Ireland, becoming a Member, later a Fellow, of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. She subsequently moved to train in psychiatry in Ireland at St Patrick’s University Hospital and in the UK at the Maudsley Hospital, London, the Institute of Psychiatry, London and Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. She gained a diploma in Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy from the Institute of Psychiatry, London, and Membership of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, UK.
She was appointed to consultant psychiatrist posts at the Maudsley Hospital and St James’s Hospital, Dublin, in 2000. In 2004, with colleagues, she founded the first dedicated Psycho-Oncology service in Ireland, creating a blueprint for psycho-oncology services nationally (National Cancer Strategy, Ireland 2017). In 2002, she helped to establish the Liaison Psychiatry Section, Irish Division, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, serving as honorary secretary until 2007. She was also a member of the Post-Graduate Training Committee (Examinations Sub-committee of the Irish College of Psychiatrists). In 2017, she returned to study for a Masters in Education at TCD.
https://www.tcd.ie/research/researchmatters/am-odwyer.php
Dr Oana Deac graduated from Medical School in Trinity College Dublin in 2018. Prior to that she undertook a Bachelor’s Degree in Molecular Medicine in Trinity (2008-2012) and a Research Master Degree (MSc, 2012-2013). As a first year SPR in Oncology Oana is passionate about improving patient outcomes and her main area of interest in Cancer Immunology and Immunotherapy. As an ICAT fellow she hopes to better understand the immune processes involved in the tumour microenvironment with the aim to elucidate the best timing to introduce new therapies in gastrointestinal malignancy.