Reading Groups

In early 2021, our team will host a series of reading groups, whose participants will read and discuss extracts from the fiction, all of which depict a character with dementia.

The aims is to discover if the features identified in our mind style analysis are significant for readers, and to understanding if – and how – literary representations can facilitate understanding of the dementia experience.

The series of 6 sessions will run separately for four different groups:

  1. people living with dementia
  2. caregivers
  3. trainee social workers
  4. general public

“…our enjoyment of fiction is predicated – at least in part – upon our awareness of our ‘trying-on’ mental states potentially available to us but at a given moment differing to our own.”

Lisa Zunshine, Why we read fiction: Theory of mind and the novel (OSH, 2006)

The Information Sheet for potential participants in the reading groups can be downloaded from here:

We have also compiled a list of Sources of Support, which may be useful to those affected by any of the issues raised in our reading groups:

Participants in our reading groups are invited to read the following to understand how they will be run: