Stephen Casper, a professor of history at Clarkson University and the associate director of the Honors Program has been appointed to an advisory board for a Wellcome Trust-funded grant on the sociology of acquired brain injury and neurodegenerative disease. Casper is the only non-UK-based member.
The project seeks to understand the following:
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How does depicting Alzheimer’s-related dementias as environmentally-induced change understandings of the classification, cause, and diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease?
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How is research into traumatic brain injury shaping novel therapeutic interventions for neurodegenerative diseases? What are the consequences for patients?
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How are regulations embedded into research on environmentally-induced dementias? What are the envisaged risks, regulations, and wider policy implications of this biomedical research? In asking these questions, this project is amongst the first to empirically explore the societal and scientific implications of these emerging sciences of dementia.
“This professional recognition of my broader impact flows from my now years-long program of research on the history of traumatic brain injury and its relationship to the onset of long-term neurological diseases. As a member of the advisory council (and the only international member), my work will feed the direction of the project, from analyzing the broader implications of the findings to looking at ways that broader public engagement can be made possible around these issues,” Professor Casper said.
The project is sponsored by the Wellcome Trust at the University of Sheffield and led there by anthropologist Dr. Gregory Hollin. It starts in December 2021 and will be funded for at least 5 years.
The other members of the advisory board are:
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Dawn Astle, Founder of The Jeff Astle Foundation
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Christ Bryant, Member of Parliament and Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Acquired Brain Injury
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Michael Grey, Neuroscientist and trustee of the United Kingdom Acquired Brain Injury Forum
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Karen Harrison Denning, Head of research at Dementia UK
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Dominic Malcolm, Loughborough University, sociology of sport
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Tiago Moreira, Durham university, sociology of dementia
