The aims are
• To promote and engage in international research which seeks to explore meanings and assumptions relating to citizenship when living with dementia and consider their implications for social life and social policy.
• To undertake international comparisons on the meanings, practices and socio-legal and political contexts of citizenship within and across nations and promote academic, public and policy debate about promoting meaningful citizenship.
• To engage in collaborative high-quality research; thereby informing and contributing to debates on citizenship and inclusion when living with dementia.
Membership
• The network seeks to develop partnerships between academics internationally, people with dementia, families and communities, health and social care and third sector organisations and policy makers (national and international).
• The core membership is restricted to academics and people with dementia but partnership status will be available to all others, including family carers.
About the network and its activities
•The network was established in 2014, partly with support from the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond – The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, and was initiated by Ann-Charlotte Nedlund, Linköping University. The first network meeting was held in October 2014 in Norrköping. Since then, several network meetings have been continuously held, the last one 2023 and more are planned for the year.
• Today, the network has roughly 115 members/researchers from several universities from more than 15 countries across the globe. The members will work collaboratively to promote and develop the network at national and international levels. It is up to the future members to identify funders for future projects. The network has enabled collaborations that have, among other things, a. resulted in several research applications, research projects, scientific articles, books, university courses.
• People living with dementia and related third sector organizations are welcome to join the network.
Guiding principles
• The network seeks to promote respect and recognition for the voice, status, capabilities and rights of people living with dementia.
• The network will work in partnership with people living with dementia to undertake research which seeks to enhance understanding of their citizenship status and practices, identify barriers (social, political and economic), challenge marginalising practices and policies and promote their equality.
• The network is open to a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, methods and bodies of knowledge (including experiential knowledge) and multiple perspectives, also theoretical, in order to enrich understanding, inform public discourse and promote effective policy-making.
• The research undertaken by the network will aim to identify, explore and represent the experiences, social and political contexts and perspectives of diverse groups living with dementia (whether related to gender, class, ethnicity, religion, nationality etc.).
• The network will seek to bring critical perspectives to academic and policy debate in this area, (especially critical disability, gender theory, political theory etc.) and use these to inform and challenge discourse and policy making.
