Monday
March 6th
Prologue to Creative Brain Week 2023
Updates on projects inspired by Creative Brain Week 2022
An introduction to ambitions for this year’s event and attendees for 2023
Scene setting presentations on Brain Health and Hope.
4.00-6.00pm
Creative Brain Week 2022 Recap and Look Ahead
Introduction to the 2023 programme and recalling some of the achievements started from the 2022 event.
Contributors
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:
Bluesky: @proflawlor.bsky.social
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/
Updates from initiatives seeded in Creative Brain Week 2022
- Making A Way Out Of No Way – Copa Y Vida – video
- East Africa mental health intervention – Ganzamunga Zihindula and Rose Mary Nakame
- Brain FM – Dance for Brain Health, Anusha Yasoda-Mohan and Magda Kaczmarska
- Centre for Forced Migration Studies – Angelika Sharygina
Contributors
Magda Kaczmarska, MFA (she/her, they/them) is a dance artist and creative aging thought leader who uses co-creative community dance as a vehicle for belonging and wellbeing. Magda leverages a dual background in neuropharmacology research and dance to build bridges and empower individuals and communities to be active agents in their creativity and brain health. As an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health, Magda works collaboratively with interdisciplinary leaders around the globe to advance access to creative aging programs that support brain health, belonging and artistic expression across the lifespan. She founded DanceStream Projects, a creative collective based in New York City, that cultivates transdisciplinary partnerships to provide direct ally-ship and empowerment to communities by bridging arts and health and centering dance as a catalyst for systems change. Along with Dr. Anusha Yasoda-Mohan, she leads BrainFM, a co-creative educational tool that unites dance and storytelling to learn about the brain.
Magda mentors future leaders in the creative and health sector through regular partnership at the Fordham Ailey School of Dance in New York City and the Arts in Medicine Fellowship in Lagos, Nigeria. She serves as a representative to the UN with Generations United and is on the executive committee of the UN NGO Committee on Ageing.
Websites:
https://dancestreamprojects.org/
Social Media:
https://www.instagram.com/magdakacz2013/
https://twitter.com/MagdaKaczmarsk4
Dr. Anusha Yasoda-Mohan is a Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health and the Program Manager for a National Research Program called EMERALD-Lewy aimed to improve diagnosis, management and lived experience of Lewy Body Dementia, a type of neurodegenerative disorder, in Ireland. She is also a trained Indian classical and Bollywood dancer. While her research looks into the intersection of sensory perception and cognition in different brain related conditions like tinnitus (the continuous ringing in the ears) and dementia, she practices communicating neuroscience topics through performing arts-based workshops with the aim to promote brain health literacy.
Google Scholar:
https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=GxPjtv4AAAAJ&hl=en
Social:
Instagram: @nushmo90
Facebook: @Anusha.mohan.39
LinkedIn: @AnushaYasoda-Mohan
Rose Mary Nakame is the founder and executive director of REMI East Africa which is a health equity organization working to improve the health and lives of the poorest living in rural areas.
Rose is a recipient of 13 grants from People’s Vaccine Alliance, Pollination Project and University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA and Atlantic Institute based at Oxford USA. These projects were focused on a range of issues such as storytelling for rural health system strengthening, vaccine equity, mental health, refugee health and women’s empowerment.
Rose was awarded the 2022 Global Heroines of Health by Women in Global Health, 2021 storytelling prize winner for Sabin Vaccine Instiute and Nursing now and 2019 Recognizing Exellence around champions of health (REACH) Awards finalist.
Rose is a Global Atlantic Fellow for health equity at George Washington University, USA. 2018 US Department of State Mandela Washington Fellow at University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2018 recipient of the Equity and Merit scholarship for Master in Public Health at The University of Manchester, Advanced Nursing Certificate from University of Applied Sciences, Finland and holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Clarke International University, Uganda.
Useful Links:
https://www.remieastafrica.org/
https://www.reachingthelastmile.com/reach-awards/finalists/rose-mary-nakame/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07v8g3f
Additional Social Media
Ganzamungu Zihindula is a Global Atlantic Fellow for Health Equity, and a PEPFAR Fellow Alumnae. He is currently working as a public health consultant for the design, implemention, and evaluation of health promotion interventions to help health care workers identify, prevent, and promote health.
His previous research focused on access to care, human resource for health, prevention strategies for NCDs (Cancer, Diabetes, Hypertension & Mental health), forced migration health and social determinants of health. He is passionate about health inclusion, health equity and social justice for the socially excluded people, specifically the refugees.
Dr Zihindula’s work is influenced by his lived experiences of forced displacement leading to the founding of the Urban Refugees and Asylum Seekers Assistance (URASA) project, the Southern Africa Refugee Organisations Forum (SAROF) of which he is a regional chair, the Action de Transformation Social a Impact Durable (ATRASID) as well as the Healthy Rural Society Advocacy project (HRSA).
He has participated in projects providing technical support and implementation of appropriate health programs in the public health sector for the past 15 years. Dr Zihindula has experiences working with PATH, USAID, UNFPA, WELCOME TRUST, I-TECH, MRC-UK, and PEPFAR regulations and administrative procedures for the implementation of donor-funded projects. He has published more than 45 peer reviewed articles including book chapters, and has presented at more than 51national and international conferences.
Website: https://tekano.org.za/tekano-fellow/ganzamungu-zihindula/
Social Media:
A Prelude to 2023
- Chaired by Gráinne McGettrick
- Harris Eyre – Brain Health as policymaking.
- Brian Lawlor – On Hope.
Contributors
Harris is a physician-executive focused on advancing the brain economy and building brain capital. To do this, he works across public, non-profit, philanthropic, and private sectors. He is integrating and actioning the disciplines of grand strategy, new economic thinking, transdisciplinary science, and financial engineering. He is a senior advisor for neuroscience at the Rice Office of Innovation, an adjunct with Rice’s Neuro Engineering Initiative, a visiting senior fellow at the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative, a senior advisor with McKinsey and Company, adjunct at UCSF, advisor at MD Anderson’s Cancer Neuroscience Program. Eyre is an alumnus of the Forbes 30 Under 30 and the Fulbright Scholar program. He has garnered recognition with the prestigious EB1A Green Card, an honor typically reserved for Nobel and Pulitzer prize winners. He has authored over 200 papers and chapters in journals such as Nature Medicine, The Lancet Neurology, Neuron, World Psychiatry, The Brookings Institution, OECD Press, and was the lead editor of the book ‘Convergence Brain Health’ (Oxford Press).
Websites:
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Brain-health-directed-policymaking_Final.pdf
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:
Bluesky: @proflawlor.bsky.social
Grainne is the Director of Policy and Research 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 and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Centre for Policy and Health Management, TCD.
Websites:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/grainne-mcgettrick
Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gráinne-mcgettrick-77129121/
X; @ABIIreland and @GBHI_Fellows
Instagram: @braininjury_ire
6.00 - 7.30pm
Stained Glasses Artist Talk and Exhibition Launch
Creative Brain Week attendees were invited to attend photographer Maria Sjöö in conversation with Sara Rahmani, where they discussed her art and the experiences which lead to the work featured in the Creative Brain Week exhibition.
What happens when medication doesn’t work? Do you feel lost? Hopeless? How do you cope? In Stained Glasses, Maria Sjöö explores her experience of post-natal depression and her struggle with medication. Maria delves deep into the emotional and physical changes she went through, her loss of interest, her disrupted sleep, her withdrawal from friends and family, and her hope for support.
As a part of Creative Brain Week 2023 and together with the Gillan Lab who investigate why people experience mental health issues and their different responses to treatment, Stained Glasses leads you through Maria’s lived experience and the science that underpins this complex issue.
The event brought together an artist’s depiction of the experience of poor mental health with how we understand mental health within research. The aim of the project is to make theoretical science and research – which appear quite abstract to many – more accessible, applicable to the real world, and more comprehensible to the public. In short, we are working on bridging the gap between science and the lives of the people it has the potential to help using the medium of art.
In collaboration with
Contributors
Sara Rahmani is a psychology student interested in psychotherapy, computational psychiatry, trauma and stress-related disorders, and the prevention of domestic and sexual violence.
Before commencing her undergraduate degree in psychology at Trinity College Dublin with the Gillan Lab, Sara completed modules in psychiatry at Uppsala University and in neuroscience at Luleå University of Technology.
Her research interests include predictive psychiatry and the prevention of domestic and sexual violence.
She is a Laidlaw Undergraduate Leadership and Research scholar, in which capacity she will be researching what demographic and clinical factors may be useful for individualising the treatment of psychiatric illnesses.
Websites:
https://gillanlab.com/sara-rahmani/
https://laidlawscholars.network/users/sara-rahmani
Maria Sjöö is a photographer with her work focusing on portraits and artistic photography. She has completed vocational training in photography and undertaken a course in photographic crafting, with an interest on analogue photography. She has taught photography and exhibited her work on peri-natal depression – ‘Stained Glasses’ – at several locations.
Social Media: