Wednesday
March 8th
Theme of Day: Imagination
Imagination as bridge between Conflict to Joy.
From the Aesthetics of Care to the Neuroscience of Emotion.
How do people know we can do better?
Where does that capacity reside in the brain?
How is it revealed in practice?
9.30-10.00am
Reflections and Introductions
Dominic Campbell, Chris Bailey and Autumn Brown reflected on some of the ideas from the previous day and took us through the major themes of the day ahead.
Contributors
Christopher Bailey is the Arts and Health Lead at the World Health Organization and a co-founder of the Jameel Arts and Health Lab. The lab is looking at the evidence base for the health benefits of the arts by building up a global network of research centers to look at effective practice as well as the foundational science of why the arts may benefit physical, mental and social wellbeing. The emphasis of the program is supporting underserved communities around the world. Through its Healing Arts activities, he program also engages with the global media to promote pro health messaging and build solidarity on health issues through all media. Educated at Columbia and Oxford Universities as well as the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, after a career as a professional actor and playwright, Christopher joined the Rockefeller Foundation as their Research Manager, and from there was recruited to WHO where he lead the Health Informatics work and later their on-line communications team before starting the Arts and Health program. As an ambassador for the field, he has also performed original pieces such as Stage 4: Cancer and the Imagination, and The Vanishing Point: A journey into Blindness and Perception, in venues around the world from the Hamwe Festival in Rwanda, to the Wellcome Collection in London, to the World Bank in DC, as well as Lincoln Center in NY, the LA Opera, LACMA, and Warner Bros Studios in LA, and the Conservatory of Music in San Francisco among many others. The basic message of his work is to amplify the WHO definition of health which states that health is not merely the absence of disease and infirmity, but the attainment of the highest level of physical, mental and social wellbeing.
Website:
https://www.who.int/initiatives/arts-and-health
Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-bailey-21072050
Dr. Autumn Brown is a transdisciplinary postdoctoral scholar at University College Dublin. She has published across numerous fields including science education, science and society, and equitable access to education. Her research interests include the history of scientific knowledge and immigration, cold war art-science innovations, and STEAM pedagogies. She is the co-founder and co-host of the podcast series, The Art-Science Salon. Her current work explores the transfers and transformations of knowledge regarding silencing technologies as part of the Spectres & Camouflage project at University College Dublin and transdisciplinary non-formal learning with the Science and Society research group at Trinity College Dublin. She holds a masters degree in Science Communication and Public Engagement from The University of Edinburgh and a PhD in Education from Trinity College Dublin.
Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/autumn-brown-558884139/
X; https://twitter.com/fairytalesci and www.twitter.com/ArtPlusSciSalon
Instagram: www.Instagram.com/dr.fairytalescience
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/
10.00am-12.00pm
Imagining a Culture of Care
Intelligence from the cutting edge of care. When neuroscience and creativity combine with contemporary life is the nurturing of care being reimagined? Are nursing staff a type of artist? Documentary film-making a strategy for healthcare transformation? Where will this lead science, arts and policy?
- Chaired by Dominic Campbell
- Dr Philip Crowley – National Director of Strategy and Research, HSE
- Professor James Thompson – The Aesthetics of Everyday Care
- Jill Sonke One Nation One Project.
- Alejandro Lopes Valdes and Rhodri Cusack in discussion: Neuroscience and imagining cultures of care – Groups, Development, Empathy?
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
Dr Philip Crowley is the National Director for Strategy and Research in the Health Services Executive (the national organisation that delivers public health services in Ireland).
In his previous national health service roles over the last ten years he was national lead for quality and patient safety and national lead for quality improvement.
He leads on strategic planning, research, population health and wellbeing, global health, human rights and performance reporting to the HDE Board.
He is a graduate of the Advanced Training Programme in Healthcare Delivery Improvement, Intermountain Healthcare Salt Lake City Utah.
He is a doctor who works part-time as a General Practitioner. He worked for five years in Nicaragua, trained in public health in Newcastle Upon Tyne and worked for six years as Deputy Chief Medical Officer in the Department of Health.
Website:
Social Media:
www.twitter.com/crowley_philip
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-philip-crowley-321ba441
Rhodri Cusack is Thomas Mitchell Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Director, Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. The Cusack Lab studies the development of infants in their first year of life. They are based at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin, and collaborate with maternity hospitals in Dublin and other centres across Ireland. Their expertise and backgrounds range from physics to psychology and neonatology to neuroscience. They use many methods to study infant development, including online tasks and MRI.
Website:
Social:
Jill Sonke, PhD, is research director in the Center for Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida (UF), director of national research and impact for the One Nation/One Project initiative, and co-director of the EpiArts Lab, a National Endowment for the Arts Research Lab. She is an affiliated faculty member in the UF School of Theatre & Dance, the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases, the Center for African Studies, the STEM Translational Communication Center, and the One Health Center, and is an editorial board member for Health Promotion Practice journal. With a specialization in the arts and health communication, Jill served in the pandemic as a senior advisor to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Vaccine Confidence and Demand Team on the COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence Task Force.
With 27+ years of experience and leadership in the field of arts in health and a PhD in arts in public health from Ulster University in Northern Ireland, Jill is active in research and policy advocacy nationally and internationally. She is an artist and a mixed methods researcher with a current focus on population-level health outcomes associated with arts and cultural participation, arts in public health, and the arts in health communication. She is the recipient of a New Forms Florida Fellowship Award, a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship Award, a NISOD Excellence in Teaching Award, a UF Internationalizing the Curriculum Award, a UF Most Outstanding Service-learning Faculty Award, a UF Public Health Champions award, a UF Cross-Campus Faculty Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and over 350 grants for her programs and research at the University of Florida.
Websites:
https://www.onenationoneproject.com
https://arts.ufl.edu/directory/profile/1181
Social Media:
X: @UFCAM
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jill-sonke-72b85690/
A theatre academic and researcher based at the University of Manchester, Professor Thompson was a Senior Manager at the University having been their first Vice President for Social Responsibility until 2019, where he led on all aspects of public engagement, community outreach, equality and diversity and environmental responsibility.
He was the founding Director of the TiPP Centre in 1992 and founder of In Place of War – a project supporting arts programmes in war and disaster zones. He has written widely on applied theatre, socially-engaged arts and theatre in conflict and humanitarian disaster contexts. His books include ‘Performance Affects’ (2009), ‘Humanitarian Performance’ (2014) and ‘Care Aesthetics’ (2022). In 2021 he edited ‘Performing Care’ with Amanda Stuart Fisher and is currently researching the relation between art and care – part of a new project funded by the AHRC on Care Aesthetics.
Website:
https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/projects/care-aesthetics-research-exploration-project
Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-thompson-94868813b/
12.15–1.00 pm
Creative Brain Week Living Labs
Living Labs were an opportunity to dive deep with peers, or engage across experience and disciplines into the topics of Creative Brain Week.
Daily sessions offered attendees an opportunity to discuss, develop and reflect on the themes of the day through
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- Dance and movement with Ailish Claffey
- Visual arts Eliza Squibb and Wambui Karanja
- Facilitated theatre lab with Youth Theatre Ireland
-
Neuroscience dialogue
– how do the many and varied disciplines within neuroscience engage with the topics of Creative Brain Week? Each day a different expert invites peers into conversation Tuesday Mani Ramaswami, Wednesday Alison Canty with Shaimaa el-Jaafary, Thursday Adolfo Garcia.
These sessions reflected the engaged nature of the event and will be added to on the day at the venue. These sessions were In Person only.
Contributors
As a neurobiologist Alison has a long-standing interest in the plasticity of neural circuitry in the brain. Her current research is focused on live imaging of brain circuitry using 2 photon microscopy to directly visualize synaptic connections in the cerebral cortex in a range of disease models. This extends to gross structural rearrangements in response to injury, aging and neurodegenerative diseases as well as at the synaptic level of individual connections between brain cells. Alison’s current interests are in exploring non-invasive therapeutic approaches to restore lost connectivity.
As an educator, Alison aims to demystify advanced, scientific literature, and to present it in relevant and accessible formats so that it can be understood and applied in the context of understanding dementia and providing dementia care.
Website:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/alison-canty
Social Media:
Over the last two decades, Ailish has worked with diverse groups within the community developing her co-creative and Dance for Health practice. Specialising in choreological studies, her work draws from exploring the complexity of human relationship and examining the lived experience of those she works with.
As Dance Artist in Residence at The National Centre for Arts and Health (2015 – 2019) Tallaght University Hospital (TUH), Ailish’s dance film documentary The Dance Back Home received a Certificate of Excellence from the HSE Excellence Awards (2018). Ailish has designed and delivered many large-scale projects nationally and her work has been kindly supported by Dance Ireland, The Arts Council, Ireland, Culture Ireland, Kildare Co. Council, South Dublin Co. Council, The Meath Foundation, The National Centre for Arts and Health among others. Ailish is the recipient of the inaugural Artist in Residence programme at The ACRE Project, Celbridge, a partnership with Kildare County Council Arts Service.
Website:
https://ailishclaffeydance.wordpress.com
Social Media:
https://twitter.com/ailishclaffey
Neurology consultant and movement disorders specialist, working as associate professor of Neurology at Cairo University, Egypt. Shaimaa’s role is better described as a medical educator, researcher and clinician . An active member of the specialized movement disorders clinic as well as memory and cognitive dysfunction clinic for more than six years. Shaimaa is fascinated by aging and interested in neurodegenerative diseases, especially Huntington’s disease. Working on raising awareness about these diseases among health professionals and public to improve the quality of care.
Website:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/shaimaa-el-jaafary
Social Media:
Eliza uses textile design to bridge the worlds of art and science. Collaborating with healthcare providers, artists, and artisans, Eliza creates textile patterns that communicate health information for populations with low literacy or language barriers that prevent equitable healthcare access. Eliza’s textile patterns have been funded by grants like the Grand Challenge Exploration grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and her designs have been used in health campaigns in West Africa to promote maternal and infant health. Eliza is an Atlantic Fellow for US + Global Health Equity (AFHE, 2019), and she loves collaborating with other fellows around the world. Eliza co-teaches biomimicry design at the Rhode Island School of Design and human-centered design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a course that connects innovative global start-ups and nonprofits with teams of student engineers. Originally from Maine, Eliza lives in Providence, Rhode Island where she loves to try to hike, but there are no hills in Rhode Island, so she ends up canoeing in the marshes.
Websites:
https://d-lab.mit.edu/about/people/eliza-squibb
Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eliza-squibb/
Wambui is a psychologist and independent consultant. She grew up in Murang’a, Kenya and is now based in Nairobi, working in research, advocacy and caregiving of dementia in various African settings. Her main interests are in Healthy Ageing, Dementia and MentalHealth. She coordinates the Africa Brain Health Network, an organisation that aims to promote awareness of brain health across the lifespan in Africa and beyond. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Kenyatta University and previously was a graduate attaché atthe British Institute in Eastern Africa where she researched perceptions of cognitive decline and dementia among informal caregivers. She is an analumnus of Young African Leadership Initiative, (YALI) East Africa, and a proud global Atlantic fellow for Equity in Brain Health.
Website:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/wambui-karanja
Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wambūi-k-6a071a23b/
For the last 40 years, youth theatres in Ireland have been consciously and purposefully cultivating creativity at an important stage in the life cycle of the human being. How does youth theatre nurture creativity in young people? How does an experience that has fun at its centre promote wellbeing and provide an experience frequently described by participants as ‘transformational’? These sessions will showcase what happens in the youth theatre space. Those who join us will have the opportunity to witness exercises and approaches effective in unleashing our intrinsic ability and drive to imagine, to play, to make, to create.
Website:
Social Media:
2.00-3.30pm
Knowledge Making is Imaginative Practice
Creativity is “sense-making”. How are artists and scientists combining to explore, examine and educate?
- Chaired by Lorina Naci
- Adolfo García – Communicating Science/ Language
- Gráinne Hope – Co-curating Creative Care?
- Owen Boss and Mark Cunningham – Wernicke’s Area.
- Mark Davidson – Fighting Words
Contributors
Owen Boss is a Dublin based visual artist and designer that utilises installation, video and collaborative strategies in his work. The outcomes of his studio research are generally located off-site and made as large-scale multi-room installations that places the audience at its very centre. In 2009 he co-founded ANU Productions and is the co-artistic director.
Recent visual art projects with ANU include: The Wernicke’s Area (IMMA, 2022), The Secret Space (Project Art Centre, 2021), Intersection (The Lab, 2019), Beyond These Rooms (Tate Liverpool and The National Museum of Ireland, 2019), The Anvil (Manchester International Festival, 2019), Scrapefoot (The Ark, 2019), Falling Out of Standing (Dingle Film Festival, 2019, Highlanes Gallery, 2017), These Rooms (London, 2018, Dublin 2016).
Recent theatre design includes Staging the Treaty (ANU, National Concert Hall, 2022), The Same (Corcadorca Theatre Company, Irish Arts Centre, 2022, Galway International Festival, 2019, Cork, 2017), Mabel’s Magnificent Flying Machine (The Gate, 2021), Hail to the Great Wave (Corcadorca Theatre Company, Triskel Art Centre, 2021), The Party to End All Parties (ANU, Dublin Theatre Festival, 2020), Lost O’Casey (ANU, Dorset Street Flats and Parnell Square, The Abbey Theatre), Sunder (ANU, Moore Street).
Other work with ANU includes World’s End Lane, Laundry, Boys of Foley Street, Vardo, Thirteen and Pals.
Website:
https://imma.ie/whats-on/anu-the-wernickes-area/
Social Media:
www.twitter.com/anuproductions
https://www.facebook.com/anuproductions/
www.instagram.com/anu_productions
Professor Mark Cunningham is the the Ellen Mayston Bates Professor of Neurophysiology of Epilepsy at Trinity College Dublin. His position is funded through a large philanthropic donation, given by Ellen Mayston Bates upon her death. Professor Cunningham studied at Queen’s University, Belfast where he read Physiology as an undergraduate and obtained his PhD in Physiology from the University of Bristol. He then worked in Bristol University, University of Leeds, Heidelberg University and Newcastle University. In 2005 he was awarded a RCUK Academic Fellowship at Newcastle University. In 2007 alongside Prof. Miles Whittington he founded the first UK research platform for conducting electrophysiological recordings from live human brain tissue ex vivo in Newcastle with support from the Wolfson Foundation. In 2016 he was appointed as Professor of Neuronal Dynamics at the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University and currently holds a visiting Professorship at Newcastle University.
Website:
https://www.tcd.ie/research/profiles/?profile=mcunnin1
https://imma.ie/whats-on/anu-the-wernickes-area/
Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-cunningham-91942a6/
https://twitter.com/markcnewry
Fighting Words offers a wide range of workshops, all of which are designed to promote creativity and writing as a fun and powerful means of self-expression.
Mark works with Fighting Words as the Programme Coordinator leading the coordination of activities and on-boarding of other organisations, schools and volunteers and is the lead facilitator during daily workshops. He also plans and runs the creative writing workshops and summer camps and creates the collaborative projects with published authors, filmmakers and other creative thought leaders in the Arts and Media space.
Website:
Social Media:
www.twitter.com/FightingWordsIE
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-davidson-94819290/
Adolfo García, Ph.D., specializes in the neuroscience of language. He serves as Director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Center (Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina), Global Atlantic Fellow at the Global Brain Health Institute (University of California, San Francisco and Trinity College Dublin), Associate Researcher at Universidad de Santiago de Chile, High-Level Talent of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, and President of the TREC translation research network. He is also co-founder of Include, a global network for crosslinguistic research on brain health; and creator of the Toolkit to Examine Lifelike Language (TELL) app. He has authored more than 200 publications and offered over 250 presentations. His science communication milestones include a TEDx talk with a live audience of 12,000 persons, the TV show “Of brains and words,” the video series “Language, brain, and body,” the radio column “Mind and communication,” and the documentary “Impulso sonoro” (Canal Encuentro). His contributions have been recognized by awards and distinctions from the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States, the Argentine Association of Behavioral Science, the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires, and the Alzheimer’s Association.
Websites:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/
Social Media:
https://twitter.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/
https://www.instagram.com/
A professional cellist and an Arts & Health Leader, Gráinne Hope is the founder and Artistic Director of Music & Health Ireland, Ireland’s leading Music in healthcare organisation. Following graduate studies in the US, Gráinne qualified as a Music & Health trainer through an EU programme partnership, and designs and manages music programmes in healthcare and community settings nationally in partnership with the National Concert Hall and Local Authority Arts Offices. Grainne is a Clore Cultural Leadership Fellow (Wellcome Trust award), a Global Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health (GBHI) and Current Chair of Arts and Health Coordinators Ireland.
Websites:
https://musicandhealthireland.ie
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/grainne-hope
Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/grainne-hope-ba20a029/
Lorina Naci is Associate Professor and leader of the Cognition and Consciousness Group at the School of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin. Her work focuses on developing novel biomarkers of healthy and disordered cognition in brain-injured and aging populations. Her work has made ground-breaking contributions to the understanding of cognition and consciousness for individuals with severely limited motoric output, such as severely brain-injured, anaesthetised or advanced Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients. Concurrently, she explores the medico–ethical and societal implications of these applications. She received her PhD from the University of Cambridge as a Cooke Fellow in 2011. In 2017, she received the L’Oréal – UNESCO International Rising Talent Award. Professor Naci serves as a member of the Governing Board of the Global Brain Health Institute, at Trinity College Dublin and University of California San Francisco, USA. She is funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Irish Research Council, and Enterprise Ireland.
Website:
Social:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorina-naci-04a4a037/
4.00-5.30pm
Imagination is Awesome: Caring Connects
Creative Brain Week 2023 weaved disciplines, practices and continents to show the neuroscience of emotion beneath compassionate creativity.
- Chaired by Richard Roche
- Virginia Sturm – Awe and Dyslexia and Empathy
- Justine Foster – Creative Community Health Care
- African Brain Health Network represented by Funmi Akindejoye, Sibusiso Vonde-r Fihlani, Lungile Quiny Dube, Bongiwe Lusizi, Kirti Ranchod and Lena Stofile.
Contributors
Rooted within many traditional knowledge systems, the arts and creativity, in its various forms, has been used to support healthy individuals and communities. This session will highlight examples of this valuable resource. With Bongiwe Lusizi, Funmi Akindejoye, Kirti Ranchod, and Sibusiso Fihlani.
Website: https://africabrainhealth.network/
Funmi Akindejoye hails from Nigeria and doubles as an Environmental (Public) Health researcher and a visual artist. She is a senior Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain health.
Her work focuses on environmental risk factors for brain health and the use of nature to improve psychological outcomes. In 2022 she was nominated for the global Metrodora awards as a female Mental health leader in medicine and science.
Funmi’s recent body of work focuses on ‘’Case studies on the influence of urban design on mental health’’. She has successfully conducted such case studies in Lagos Nigeria, Lapua Finland, and currently Monrovia Liberia. Where she combines workshops and art exhibitions to showcase the results of these studies.
Presently she is investigating the impact of therapeutic gardens among persons with dementia and their caregivers in Africa.
She has over a decade of professional experience as a visual artist and has participated in several art exhibitions locally and internationally. Funmi uses art as a tool for social change, public health therapy, and education.
Website:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/funmi-akindejoye
Sibusiso ‘Vonde-r’ Fihlani is a podcaster,, art-vist , Drama therapist and applied Drama/Theatre facilitator who has worked at Soweto Theatre, Rural Health Advocacy Projects (RHAP), and Nkosi Haven as an art teacher, just to mention a few. He has completed his MA in Drama Therapy with the University of Witwatersrand. He is an Atlantic Senior Fellow with Tekano for health equity based in South Africa. He forms part of African Brain Health Network, where he leads on a podcast titled : Afro-Brain Stor(e)ying Po(t)cast https://iono.fm/rss/chan/7716 .
He is also passionate about ways of advocating for healthier relationships between fathers and children through play and storytelling. This playwright and theatre maker has been has been awarded with awards ranging from the Dr John Kani award for our outstanding theatre performance, direction and community based drama for social change under the wits school of art, the Yvonne Banning Applied drama awarded for outstanding ethnographic research in applied drama by a postgraduate student .He has contributed to the development of South African drama therapy for the African community.
Websites:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sibusiso-vonde-r-7032a147
https://tekano.org.za/tekano-fellow/sibusiso-fihlani/
Social Media:
- www./twitter.com/vonde_r?t=
nSBgmWtycTnvcgL-ZXcF9Q&s=08 - www.facebook.com/
sibusisovonder.fihlani? mibextid=ZbWKwL
- /www.linkedin.com/in/
sibusiso-vonde-r-7032a147
Justine Foster spent several years working as a visual artist in a public and community context in UK and Ireland. She is currently Programme Manager at Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre (WCAC), where she has worked for 25 years to create an inclusive, vibrant space for public and artists. For West Cork Arts Centre, she has developed numerous collaborative projects with an emphasis on forging local, regional, and national partnerships. In 2002, she initiated an Arts for Health Partnership Programme with the HSE, Cork Education & Training Board and Cork County Council which she continues to manage. In 2015, she initiated a Contemporary Dance Programme at Uillinn and began producing Uillinn Dance Season in 2018 with Curator Luke Murphy (2020 – 2023). Justine is member of Arts and Health Coordinators Ireland (AHCI, Chairperson 2020 – 2022).
Website:
https://www.westcorkartscentre.com
Social Media:
https://twitter.com/justine_foster
https://twitter.com/westcorkarts
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqokc_q_BVkS8jOMT_6zqmg
https://www.instagram.com/uillinnwestcorkarts/
An Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity, Bongiwe Lusizi promotes African bow music, as well as arts, crafts, dance, poetry, creative writing and other creative activities to build a progressive heritage movement.
Websites:
https://racialequity.atlanticfellows.org/fellow/bongiwe-lusizi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3qSN1Pz_sU&t=292s
Social Media:
https://twitter.com/AfreGlobal
A young black female writer whose aspirations lie in youth advocacy through reading, writing and the conceptualisation of Decoloniality in methods of learning. Director for a fairly new NPO (USAWA for Learning and Healing). Facilitator in Adolescent and Youth issues of development programs.
Currently running the “Finding Voice: A Space for Safe Expression and Self-actualisation” Project in schools of rural KZN (Bergville). I am recently registered with the South African Council for Educators as an educator. Post-graduate research topic: Intersectionality of Education and Health in schools. A Case study of KZN rural and peri-urban school programs.
Lungile is a fellow at the Atlantic Fellowships for Health Equity in South Africa. A global participant in health equity programs.
Website:
https://www.atlanticfellows.org/fellows-articles/lungile-quiny-dube
Kirti Ranchod is a neurologist and brain health consultant based in Johannesburg, South Africa with an interest in the field of neuroaesthetics including the impact of art on brain health. She is the founder of Memorability.co offering practical, neuroscience-based mental health solutions that includes art and creativity, the co-founder of the African Brain Health Network, and an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health. Her appreciation for art started with Friday evening lessons from her very patient father as an eight-year-old. She used drawing and creativity to help with her medical studies and uses art and creativity in her work as a neurologist to support better brain health. Influenced by her culture, the cultures she is surrounded by, and her professional and personal experiences, her work explores the points at which neuroscience, art, yogic science, and other knowledge systems intersect or diverge. Related to this, she hosts a series of talks on Investing in our Cultural Capital for Better Brain Health at the Origins Centre (Wits).
Website:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/kirti-ranchod
Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirti-ranchod-8806327a
Prof. Richard Roche is a Professor and Deputy Head of Department at the Department of Psychology, Maynooth University, where he has been employed since 2005, following undergraduate, postgraduate and postdoctoral study at Trinity College, Dublin. His areas of interest are cognitive neuroscience/neuropsychology, particularly memory, ageing, dementia, stroke, brain injury and synaesthesia. He has published 38 research articles, over 90 conference posters, several book chapters and three academic books (plus two novels). He has to date accrued over EUR 1.4 million in research funding and has graduated nine PhD students and three MSc students. He is currently involved in collaborations between Maynooth University and the Alzheimer Society of Ireland, as well as Peamount Healthcare and Beaumont and St Vincent’s Hospitals. He has served as President of Neuroscience Ireland and was Founding President of the Irish Brain Council. He is also strongly committed to science outreach and public engagement and has served on the FENS Communications Committee since 2020, of which he became Chair in 2022.
Website:
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/psychology/our-people/richard-roche
Social:
https://twitter.com/RRocheNeuro
https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-roche-12457516/
Lena Stofile: A Global Atlantic Institute senior fellow and a Public Health Professional with Environmental Health as her speciality area. She is based in the Khayelitsha Health, Cape Town, South Africa.
She is part of the community of global fellows based at AFHESA. Her professional role and passion involve preventative health services activism and advocacy for equitable access to dignified basic services and a clean environment as a basic human right in relation to the addressing social determinants that has an impact on public health in vulnerable township communities.
She personally identifies and relate with issues of internal displacement and migration within the borders of South Africa and was part of the AFHESA fellows that went on a migration health tour in Jordan in 2019. Part of her social change portfolio entails:
- Collaboration with a local community group in the startup of food garden project to positively turn ‘’unused’’ public spaces into a sustainable community food baskets, to address health and food insecurity in surrounding community and Early childhood development centres supplied with the produce,
- a fellow led collaborative initiative with local seamstresses to sew face mask for distribution at old age homes in underprivileged township communities across Cape town, at the height of Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns in 2020
- as well as community project focusing on child health and children’s health rights to quality early childhood development care in informal spaces in Khayelitsha (2019).
She is currently part of collaborative social change initiatives focused on Migration and Health and how it impacts women as well as a social change initiative addressing access to land as a social determinant of health’ within disadvantaged communities in Johannesburg, S.A.
Websites:
https://www.atlanticfellows.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/
Virginia Sturm, PhD, is the John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Foundation Endowed Professor at UCSF. She is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry and the director of the Clinical Affective Neuroscience (CAN) Laboratory that is located in the UCSF Memory and Aging Center and affiliated with the UCSF Center for Psychophysiology and Behavior (CPB).
After undergraduate work at Georgetown University, she received her PhD degree in clinical psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and completed her clinical internship and postdoctoral fellowship at UCSF in neuropsychology. Her research focuses on identifying the neural systems that support emotion and social behavior in neurodegenerative disease and neurodevelopmental disorders.
Websites:
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/virginia-sturm
https://profiles.ucsf.edu/virginia.sturm
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Virginia-Sturm
Social Media:
5.30-6.30pm
Connecting Global Imaginations
Global Atlantic Fellows invited all Creative Brain Week attendees to a facilitated networking reception for continued connection, community building and conversation. Led by Adekami Adeniyan, Funmi Akindejoye, Petronilla Battista, Katherine Bond, Kanyisa Booi, Yan Chen, Renata Cuk, Lungile Dube, Sibusiso Fihlani, Adolfo Garcia, Atholl Kleinhans, Alex Kornhuber, Bongiwe Lusizi, David Malinson, Luis Martinez, Lingani Mbakile-Mahlanza, Haydeé Nancy Rumaldo Romuacca, Eliza Squibb, Kritaya Sreesunpagit, Lena Stofile.
This was an In Person event.
7.00-8.30 pm
A Language For Imaginary Worlds? Online discussion from the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute
Worlds matter. Imagination committed to language shapes what is believed to be possible. From future democracy, to the inner life of a person with Alzheimer’s. From the language of doctors to the worlds we dream today and make tomorrow. Words to live by.
- Chaired by Eve Patten
- Dr Elspeth Payne Democratic Imagination
- Cindy Weinstein – The Language of Imaginary Worlds – Alzheimer’s.
Contributors
Eve Patten has been Director of the Trinity Long Room Hub since July 2020. A Professor in the School of English and a Fellow of Trinity, she has previously served as Head of the School of English and Director of the Trinity Oscar Wilde Centre. A scholar in nineteenth and twentieth-century British and Irish literature, she has lectured and written widely in this field: recently, she is editor of Irish Literature in Transition, 1940-1980 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and author of Ireland, Revolution, and the English Modernist Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2022). Eve has been a frequent contributor to the Irish Times, RTÉ and the BBC, and is series editor for Liverpool University Press’s Studies in Irish Literature. She has also served on various boards for the Irish Arts Council, the Irish Research Council and the Royal Irish Academy, and was a member of the inaugural committee of the Trinity Long Room Hub. As Director, she remains a keen advocate for Arts and Humanities research both within Trinity and across the Long Room Hub’s national and international networks.
Websites:
https://www.tcd.ie/English/staff/academic-staff/eve-patten.php
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/
Social Media:
Elspeth Payne is the Coordinator of the Schuler Democracy Forum at the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute, Trinity College Dublin. The Forum applies research in the Arts and Humanities to questions relating to democracy, media, and technology. Working with media practitioners and civil society organisations, the Forum is committed to translating research into real-world practice and activity. The Schuler Democracy Forum podcast, the History of the Future, co-hosted by Ellie Payne and Mark Little, will be released on 8 February.
Website:
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/people/project-staff.php
Social Media:
https://twitter.com/elspethpayne
https://twitter.com/SchulerForum
www.linkedin.com/in/elspeth-payne-594907b2
Cindy is a professor of American literature and her primary area of expertise is in the nineteenth century. She has written three monographs in the field and edited four volumes. In addition, she teaches courses in women’s fiction, African-American literature, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe. She has served in several administrative positions during her academic career. These have included Executive Officer of the Humanities, Vice Provost, and Chief Diversity Officer.
Most recently, she has written Finding the Right Words with Dr. Bruce Miller, published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 2021. This book, for a general audience, tells the story of her father’s early onset Alzheimer’s using the perspectives of a daughter, English professor and neurologist. It is an homage to her father, to the literature she loves, and to the possibilities of interdisciplinary thinking.
Website:
https://weinsteinandmiller.com/
https://www.gbhi.org/profiles/cindy-weinstein
https://www.hss.caltech.edu/people/cindy-weinstein
Social Media:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindy-weinstein-4366b34b/
Founded in 2006, the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute is dedicated to advancing Trinity College Dublin’s rich tradition of research excellence in the Arts and Humanities, on an individual, collaborative and inter-disciplinary basis.
Website:
