Critical dementia studies: alliances, resistances and dialogues

Dementia studies has in recent years expanded beyond the pervasive perspectives of medicine to also involve approaches from the social sciences and humanities. This research has to some extent focused rights and citizenship of people with dementia. Still, there is a notable dearth of studies that deals with the social inequalities, discrimination and marginalization facing people with dementia.

There is also a lack of dialogues between dementia studies and existing critical fields, e.g. critical disability studies. It is thus both timely and of international relevance to further develop the field of critical dementia studies, which incorporates theories and approaches from existing critical scholarship.

The aim of this project is to author and edit an international edited volume on critical dementia studies, to be published with Routledge in 2022. The volume develops ideas from my own previous research as well as from papers presented as part of the workshops held by the Critical Dementia Network, which was established in 2019 with funding from Riksbankens jubileumsfond.

Chapters are authored by a mix of international scholars within different critical fields in the humanities and social sciences, as well as activists/campaigners living with dementia. The volume is a pioneering publication that aims to forge the field of critical dementia studies though interdisciplinary dialogues on social inequalities, marginalization and power.