Old and new contacts are made in Great Britain

By lill [dot] eriksson [at] med [dot] lu [dot] se (Lill Eriksson) - published 9 September 2024

Group with SWEAH people in a park with red and green threes

SWEAH's travelers left an almost 30-degree Sweden and arrived in typical September rain and Stirling half as hot. But then the sun came and a packed program with, among other things, lectures and workshops on quantitative and qualitative methods, and a competition where the best presentations were crowned.

The postdoctoral students competed in their own class, where Thomas Lowe from the Netherlands won with a presentation about what it's like to be a relative of a person with dementia. In joint second place came SWEAH alumni Elias Ingebrand and Anna Nivestam.

A man with two umbrellas in his hands — Jerry Norlin used umbrellas in the "3 minute presentation" competition and came second in the doctoral class with his lecture on loneliness. Britain's Lucia Crowther won with a talk about how to make hospices more homely. Photo: Stina Elfverson

– Here in Scotland it often rains. To attract attention with my presentation, I chose to fold up umbrellas indoors and maybe I challenged some superstitions, says PhD student Jerry Norlin.

There was also a visit to Stirling University's dementia apartments, Dementia Services Development Center suites, an equivalent to the Swedish MoRe-Lab. PhD students and postdoctoral researchers also received a lecture and workshop on their writing. After that, they got to try VR and throughout the trip they have had the opportunity to reconnect with old and make new contacts.

The campus and hotel are located a few kilometers from the city of Stirling. A visit there awaited a chilled but appreciated ghost walk.

– Among other things, we got to take part in the city's long, dramatic history as the scene of battles for Scotland's independence, and as a border town between the "lowlands" and the "highlands", says Stina Elfverson, the graduate school's administrator.

Other program items were mental health care in academia, the future and careers of gerontology and a lecture on the "Intersectional Stigma of Place-based Aging (ISPA) project" and trying out "The Serious Game", which is based on the project.

– Inspiring and new energy, summarizes doctoral student Roar Hermansen Østby.

– New perspectives and eye-opener. Interesting to hear about all the different projects, says postdoc Mozhu Ding.

– Very helpful, especially the session about writing, something which I have looked for a long time. I appreciate the direct and honest, but friendly feedback, which is very useful. I also like meeting other postdocs with the same background, which is not always easy when you work at a small department, says postdoc Claire Poppy at the University of Southampton.