International Health Humanities Network Membership

My PhD examined collective identity narratives during Cuba's two twentieth-century revolutions and posited liminality as a tool to explore alternative archetypes of cubanía.

I am now researching dementia narratives in three Latin American countries (Cuba, Colombia, Mexico). My project aims to:

• establish inter-disciplinary networks of researchers, health professionals, people with dementia and carers in those countries in order to better understand the economic and welfare challenges of the disease in their countries and to gauge the potential of (and lay the foundations for) future collaborative research and practice;
• collate and analyse a multi-genre corpus of Latin American ‘dementia narratives’ in order to ask critical & intersecting questions about:

           - the experience and ‘meaning’ of dementia beyond clinical diagnosis as a means of re-centring people in the understanding and description of their disease;
           - the novel narratological tools needed to insightfully analyse narratives of lives affected by an illness that undermines some of the building blocks of  self-expression;
           - the potential for truly inter-disciplinary exchange through which the Humanities can offer expert insights to medical professionals working with dementia;
           - the potential of dementia narratives to raise awareness and reduce fear about the disease whilst also exploring the therapeutic possibilities of narrative and self-narrative in dementia care
           - the potential for dementia narratives to act as an important vector for inter-cultural communication within Latin America and between Latin America and the UK.

I have taught in Spanish & Latin American Studies departments in the University of Nottingham, KCL, UCL and am now based at Aston University.