Welcome to the first edition of the CIRAC Newsletter.

We are pleased to present our news at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care (CIRAC) in this format.

Your feedback is more than welcome. Please send comments to cirac@uni-graz.at.

Your CIRAC Team

Wenn Sie den Newsletter lieber auf Deutsch lesen möchten, klicken Sie bitte hier.

NEWS

CIRAC is organizing a lecture series during the summer semester: To the flyer.

• Prof. Dr. Valerie Barnes Lipscomb (University of South Florida, USA): “Age-conscious Casting: Comedy and the Middle-Aged Ingenue”. May 13, 2024, 18:00-19:30, online and HS 15.14 (Resowi).
• Prof. Dr. Anita Wohlmann (SDU Odense, Denmark and Elisabeth List Fellow): “Abortion Narratives: Reproductive Health Care between Nuance and Polarization” 22 May 2024, 18:00-19:30, online and HS 15.06 (Resowi).
• Prof. Dr. Sarah Falcus, a CIRAC Fellow: “Not-so-secret Gardens: Age, Generation and ‘Greenness’ in Children's Picturebooks” 29 May 2024, 18:00-19:30, online and 15.06 (Resowi, Bauteil F, EG). More information here.
• Prof. em. Dr. Stephen Katz (Trent University, Canada): “Dementia and Ageing: Dilemmas of Care at the Cognitive Frontier” June 11, 2024, 18:00-19:30 Online only.

Join us for talks by leading Aging Studies scholars in the CIRAC lecture series.

Endometriosis (R)Evolution: Making the Invisible Visible: International, Interdisciplinary Conference on Endometriosis

Endometriosis (R)Evolution: Making the Invisible Visible is a two day conference organized as part of the In/Visible Endometriosis: Menstruation, Menopause, and Narrative Medicine project sponsored by the Elisabeth List Fellowship Program. The conference is a unique international event bringing together experts across academic fields with the goal of offering an interdisciplinary look at endometriosis. The aim of the conference is to showcase arts and humanities perspectives on illness and how this complements medical research. The keynote speaker is artist Rachael Jablo. The keynote lecture will also serve as the opening for Jablo’s exhibition The Hysteria Project. The conference will take place on the 23rd and the 24th of May, 2024. Attendance is free.

Launch of HWK Study Group "Rejecting Futures: Practices of Resistance or Failure"

The all-encompassing paradigm of prevention—from actively preventing future disease to insuring ourselves against all sorts of possible catastrophies—prompts many of us to take our future lives, bodies, and health not as a given fact but as a project, i.e., something that can and should be responsibly devised and shaped by forecasting, planning, and intervention. The moral implications and sociocultural consequences of this trend towards projecting and planning individual as well as collective “bio-futures” have been at the centre of intensive debates in ethics, social research, and cultural studies. By comparison, the accompanying development of oppositional or subversive strategies to resist or circumvent the claims of (bio-)futurity have found little systematic attention, so far. This constitutes a research desiderate since these practices of resistance or failure appear just as significant for our present era as their “futurist” counterparts, and represent a cultural resource of inventive imagination, coping, and justification that calls for exploration and critical evaluation.
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Welcoming Prof. Dr. Anita Wohlmann

We are thrilled to announce that Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark, Anita Wohlmann, has joined us at CIRAC as a fellow! Prof. Dr. Wohlmann is the incoming senior fellow for the Elisabeth List Fellowship Programme Project In/Visible Endometriosis: Menstruation, Menopause, and Narrative Medicine.

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Welcome Rachael Jablo

We are very pleased to welcome artist Rachael Jablo to Graz. Rachael will be staying with us for four days, preparing an exhibition of her work The Hysteria Project. The exhibition, alongside a talk about the project, will be held on Thursday, 23 May 2024 at 18:00 at Forum Stadtpark. Attendance is free.

The exhibition and the artist’s talk double as the keynote lecture for our conference Endometriosis (R)Evolution: Making the Invisible Visible. You do not need to be registered for the conference to attend the exhibition.

Find out more on the Endo Revolution website.

CIRAC Warmly Welcomes Guest Researcher Mariana Cruz (Portugal)

Mariana Cruz is a PhD candidate at NOVA University of Lisbon. Her project is titled “In the Waiting Room: Aging and Late Life Institutionalization in Anglo-American Care Home Stories” and it is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).

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RECENT PUBLICATIONS

The team of the FWF-funded research project Philosophical practice in palliative care and hospice work- The role of philosophical reflection in the development of a culture of care and knowledge of dying namely Sandra Radinger, Klaus Wegleitner, Stefanie Rieger and project lead Patrick Schuchter at CIRAC is pleased to announce its first publication. The chapter is called "Last Questions – How Philosophical Practice Contributes to Developing Death Literacy". Click here to go directly to the online version of the book chapter.

Please find the project website here.

The journal Age, Culture, Humanities has published a new forum on the US presidential election. The first essays (more will follow) are dedicated to the question "Too old for the job?" and take a critical look at the ageist discourse in the media. More information can be found here.

EVENTS

The Summer Academy "On Dying and Beyond" from June 24-26, 2024 with CIRAC member Stefanie Rieger invites participants to discuss topics such as dignity, forgiveness, and comfort. The topics will be explored through keynote presentations and sharing of experiences.  More information can be found here.

Join us for trying philosophical practice about dying, death, and grief. 

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE PAST MONTHS

Sick Lit: Endometriosis Literary Series: interviews with best-selling, award-winning authors who write illness narratives about life with endometriosis. 

Sick Lit: Endometriosis Literary Series was an online series of live events which started in November 2023 and concluded in March 2024. Each episode was dedicated to one author and their writing on the topic of endometriosis. An episode featured a reading by the author, an interview conducted by PhD researcher Alekszandra Rokvity, and a moderated discussion with the audience. The presented books had various formats (memoir, autobiography, essay collection, short stories), with the thematic focus being living with endometriosis. The guests were best-selling authors Abby Norman (USA) and Tracey Lindeman (Canada), award-winning poet Emma Bolden (USA), activist Silvia Young (USA) and award winning essayist Kylie Maslen (Australia). The series was a part of the In/Visible Endometriosis: Menstruation, Menopause, and Narrative Medicine project.

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Caring-Living-Labs Graz with Anna Kainradl

"Dementia - living together in everyday life". Information and exchange on dementia for and with people with a migration biography. 17.2. 16:00-18:30 Uhr, Graz

The workshop "Dementia - Living Together in Everyday Life" on 17 February, organised in cooperation with the Migrants' Advisory Board of the City of Graz, the African Umbrella Association of Styria and the Diakoniewerk Steiermark, enabled multipliers to take a first look at the potentials and challenges of living together with people with dementia. In an exchange with the dementia expert Miša Strobl from Diakoniewerk Steiermark, information about dementia was provided and the focus of a good coexistence for all people in Graz was discussed and reflected.

Aging in Data – AgingAlgos

CIRAC hosted a two-session workshop focusing on what older adults think of algorithms as a part of the AgingAlgos project in cooperation with research partners from Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences. Dr. Vera Gallistl, Katrin Lehner, BA MA and Unmil Karadkar, PhD led the workshops, which included five adults over the age of 60. Read more…

The workshops were supported through the Aging in Data project, a research partnership project funded by the Government of Canada.

CIRAC is interested in hosting similar workshops.  If an adult of 60+ years may be interested in participating, please send a quick message in English or German to: unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at. No technological experience is necessary.

PROJECT IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Developing Compassionate Workplaces in Europe for the Digital and Green Work Environment to Protect Employees’ Mental and Physical Health and Wellbeing

Novel EU Research Project on Compassionate Workplaces funded by Horizon Europe

A novel research endeavor aimed at promoting Compassionate Workplaces to protect and strengthen the mental and physical health as well as the well-being of employees was launched at CIRAC in early 2024.

Titled "EU Co-Work Developing Compassionate Workplaces in Europe," this international project is being simultaneously conducted in Austria, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Greece, and Flanders/Belgium. With generous funding of €4.5 million from Horizon Europe, the research project is being implemented by five universities and three practice-oriented partner organizations in the field of occupational health promotion. In Austria, CIRAC at the University of Graz and the association Sorgenetz in Vienna are the central project partners.

From March 5-7, 2024, the first consortium meeting took place in Luleå, Sweden, where initial project steps were planned and coordinated.

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