Treatment and Wellbeing in an Ageing Society

This symposium brings together researchers from multiple disciplines including Public Health, Biosciences, Art and Literature. Gathering cross-disciplinary knowledge, the symposium will explore the differing, but cross-fertilizing meanings pertaining to disciplinary understandings of treatment and the challenges related to wellbeing in ageing societies.

Funded by IAS, Grand Challenges Human Wellbeing and SELCS.

Programme

• 9.30 Coffee welcome and introductions
• 10.00-11.15: “The last years of life: Health, treatment and wellbeing”. Kaare Christensen, Jens Søndergaard and Frans Boch Waldorff (SDU Danish Aging Research Center). Chair: Sonu Shamdasani (UCL Health Humanities). Respondent: Gill Livingston (UCL Psychiatry)
• 11.15 – 12.00: “How museums can help those who are lonely and at risk of isolation”. Helen Chatterjee (UCL Biosciences)
• 12.00 – 12.15: Coffee & Exhibition
• 12.15 – 13.00: Exhibition & talk: “Measuring wellbeing creatively. Co-production of a non-verbal wellbeing Measure”. Jo Volley (UCL Slade School of Fine Art) and Nir Segal (UCL Slade School of Fine Art). Exhibition at Mezzanine in IAS Forum and presentation of tool-kit
• 13.00–13.45: Lunch
• 13.45 – 15.15: Panel presentations: Ageing (in) humanities: Literature, old age and wellbeing. Chair: James Wilson (UCL Philosophy. Adina Stroia (UCL French/IMLR) - 'Impersonating Age: Breaking Down the (In)Visible Older Woman'. Stefano Rossoni (UCL Comparative Literature) – ‘“Old Age is a Massacre”: Treatment/s of the Male Ageing Body’. Peter Simonsen (SDU Literature): ”When I am an Old Woman: Hedonism and Its Discontents”. Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen (UCL Scandinavian): “Henry James's Terminations”
• 15.15: Coffee break
• 15:30 – 16:15: Uses of literature: Narrative Medicine and Human Health at SDU. Anne-Marie Mai (SDU Literature)
• 16.15 – 17.00 : Open roundup debate
• 17.00 – 17.30 : Reception