In 2020/21 the mini me lab grew up! I took up a British Academy Fellowship aimed at exploring theoretical links between the development of self, and the dissolution of self with age, and in memory conditions such as dementia. You can read more about this idea here and watch a public engagement film on the topic here.
In 2021 PhD student Aikaterini Mentzou joined the lab, funded by a Scottish Graduate Social of Social Science studentship across 2021 to 2024 to explore how the development of self in childhood might be applied to understand and address the deterioration of selfhood in dementia.
Aikaterini’s first paper discussed how a developmental understanding of the self may provide valuable insight into the experience of selfhood in dementia.
As a next step, Aikaterini completed a systematic scoping review exploring what is currently known about change in the psychological self in people living with dementia. Deeply interested in the boundaries of self, Aikaterini has also explored how insights from robotics might inform our understanding of the development of self-awareness. Watch this space for further papers!