Presentation of keynotes
Pia Kontos is a Senior Scientist at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute–University Health Network and Associate Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. She is a critical scholar committed to the transformation of long-term dementia care so it is more humanistic and socially just. She draws on the arts (e.g. music, dance, improvisational play) to enrich the lives of people living with dementia. She also creates research-based dramas to effect personal and organizational change. She has presented and published across multiple disciplines on embodiment, relationality, ethics, and dementia.
Assumpta Ryan is a Professor of Ageing and Health at Ulster University. Assumpta’ s research is focused on ageing and the care of older people. Specific interests include the needs and experiences of family carers, caregiving in dementia and quality of life in nursing and residential homes. Assumpta is the Northern Ireland Lead for the UK wide ‘My Home Life’ Leadership Support and Community Development Programme for care home managers. She has published extensively in a range of academic journals and has presented at a broad range of national and international research conferences. Assumpta is Editor of the ‘Journal of the All-Ireland Gerontological Nurses Association and is on the Editorial Board of ‘Dementia: The International Journal of Social Research and Practice’ and ‘The International Journal of Older People Nursing. Assumpta is currently President of the All-Ireland Gerontological Nurses’ Association.
Michael Banner is a Professor at Trinity College, Cambridge. His academic training is in philosophy and in theology. He has worked on a broad range of ethical issues related to as different areas as business and investment, biotechnology, animal testing, and, dementia and personhood. He is widely published, including the monography Ethics of Everyday Life: Moral Theology, Social Anthropology, and the Imagination of the Human (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2014, a publication where he also demonstrates keen interest in anthropology and the social sciences.
Steven Parish is a Professor of Anthropology at University of California, San Diego. He is trained in psychological anthropology and has conducted fieldwork in Nepal and in the United States. His research has addressed a number of topics in psychological anthropology, with a central focus on the study of self, emotion, and moral experience. In the anthropology of religion and South Asian studies, his scholarly interests include Hinduism, Buddhism, and the role of ritual in selfhood and social life. Moreover, his research has used person-centered ethnography to understand the role of culture in the development of moral consciousness, to examine the experience of inequality as it shapes the formation of self and culture in caste society, and to explore the subjectivity of suffering.
May B. Eiby is a nurse with a Masters' degree and leader of a nursing home, Dagmarsminde, in Denmark. Eiby is also the writer behind the 2017 book When care is the best medicine. The book critically examines how society treat individuals that lives with dementia. Eibys' conclusion is that care for people with dementia reduces costs in society, for instance because of less use of medicines. She is also dedicated to treat persons living with dementia with care and dignity.