The next few months we’ll be highlighting authors who have published in Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry.

Ida Marie Lind Glavind is a PhD candidate in Anthropology, at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen and at the Danish Alzheimer Association. In her dissertation, Ida followed people with Alzheimer’s disease living in Denmark, exploring how the disease affected their social life.

What is your article “Temporal Belonging: Loss of Time and Fragile Attempts to Belong with Alzheimer’s Disease” about?

In the article, I explore how a changing conception of time affects the social relations of people with Alzheimer’s disease living in Denmark. I argue that although the loss of sense of time is clinically defined as a “subjective loss of time,” it is rather an intersubjective loss. As people with Alzheimer’s break out of the shared rhythms and pace of everyday life – due to difficulties keeping track of dates and managing numbers – they challenge their closest relations. Secondly, I argue that from studying the ruptures and conflicts arising from the different conceptions of time, we learn that belonging as a sense of attachment is very much contingent on temporality.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your research interests.

In my research project, I explore the lifeworlds of people with Alzheimer’s disease and their families through ethnographic methods. I have found it exciting – and challenging –  to conduct research among people whose conception of time and vocabulary is undergoing a radical change due to their illness.

What drew you to this project?

Before starting my Ph.D. project, I worked at the Danish Alzheimer Association, a patient organization for people with dementia. Here, I was repeatedly struck by how media coverage of dementia often excluded or left out the patients’ experience and instead focused on the caregivers’ perspective. This motivated me to formulate a research project taking its point of departure in the lifeworlds of people with dementia.

What was one of the most interesting findings?

Paying attention to the experiences of people with dementia offers us surprising and nuanced insights into how dementia is not only about loss, decay, and death but also about continuing care and social relations.

What are you reading, listening to, and/or watching right now?

Currently, I am reading Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

If there was one takeaway or action point you hope people will get from your work, what would it be?

I hope the article can give scholarly attention to the role of temporality in social life and illness. For families affected by dementia, I hope the article can give a new perspective about how the loss of sense of time befalls not only the person with dementia but also the rest of the family.

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