Event Date April 22, 2026
The symposium Queering Dementia: current research on LGBTQ+ people living with dementia takes place on April 22, 2-4.30 pm (GMT+1). The symposium is free of charge and open to all. To register:
https://sh-se.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wNIFmpF2Q1aGO_CW3Sf1Cw
A recording of the symposium can be found at the bottom of the page.
What happens to the identities and relationships of LGBTQ+ individuals living with dementia? How is dementia care experienced? How can dementia care address the lives, relationships, and experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals in safe and inclusive ways?
This international research symposium brings together academics from Canada, Australia, USA and Sweden, presenting current research on LGBTQ+ people living with dementia. The symposium is aimed at academics, practitioners, policymakers and everyone else with an interest in the experiences and needs of LGBTQ+ people living with dementia and how to create queerer, safe and more inclusive dementia care and support.
The symposium includes the following presentations:
Christine Maddocks in conversation with Linn Sandberg
Louisa Smith: “Co-creating methods for research with LGBTQ+ people living with dementia”
Both dementia research and queer gerontology call for playful, joyful and creative ways to engage with older people that open up possibilities. But research with LGBTQ+ people living with dementia often relies on talk and text based methods. In this paper Louisa Smith will explore how she worked with a lived experience Reference Group to develop a methodology which captures the dynamic experiences of gender, sexuality and dementia. Reflecting on vignettes from the research, Louisa will explore how co-creating methods with participants living with dementia created space to reflect on meaningful legacies, joyful presents and uncertain futures.
Arne Stinchcombe: “Beyond the Closet: Dementia, Identity, and the Fight for Inclusive Care”
For 2SLGBTQ+ people, the path into dementia care is often shaped by decades of minority stress (discrimination, stigma, and the ongoing work of navigating hetero- and cisnormative environments) experienced across the life course. This talk asks what happens when that history follows people into the spaces where they are most vulnerable: both for people living with cognitive impairment and for their care partners. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 2SLGBTQ+ people, we explore what dementia care looks and feels like from the margins. In addition to describing unsafe dementia care, participants also showed us what safety could look like: a Pride service held in a care home’s function room, a flag on a name badge, a support network where you don’t have to explain yourself from the beginning. The findings point toward a model of inclusive dementia care grounded not just in the absence of harm, but in the active celebration of identity. From staff training to all gender washrooms to 2SLGBTQ+-specific peer networks, participants had clear ideas about what needed to change, and many were already fighting for it.
Toni Calasanti : “The importance of community for gay men and lesbian women who care for their spouses with dementia”
Thinking about gay men and lesbian women who care for spouses living with dementia often begins with the assumption that their sexual minority status results in minority stress. The question then becomes one of how they might deal with the additional stress of spousal caregiving. Without denying the oppression and stress older gay men and lesbian women experience, I argue that their marginalization has the additional and more positive effect of enhancing community formation that ultimately provides some strengths for this carework. Based on in-depth interviews I conducted among 29 gay and lesbian spousal caregivers, I point to various ways that community resources aided them in their care work, and argue that resilience emerges from community and is not simply a characteristic of an individual.
Marjorie Silverman & Alexandre Baril: “The experiences of trans or non-binary older adults living with dementia”
This presentation reviews the empirical findings from a Canadian study examining the experiences of trans and non-binary people living with dementia. Using a trans-affirmative, critical disability, anti-ageist, and intersectional approach, interviews were conducted with two trans people living with dementia and four carers of trans and non-binary people living with dementia. The findings reveal the challenges of living at the intersection of cogniticism, ageism, and cisgenderism.
Linn Sandberg & Anna Siverskog: “Memories of the rainbow: the experiences LGBTQ+ people with dementia and perspectives from dementia care”
Person-centered care for people with dementia is recurrently emphasized and is often equated with good care in Sweden and across the globe. Despite this, the significance of sexuality and gender identity has rarely been highlighted as part of what it means to be a person. This presentation reviews the findings from our research on LGBTQ people living with dementia and Swedish dementia care. The project involved analyses of policies as well as interviews with care staff and LGBTQ people living with dementia and their significant others. The study reveals the tensions between care staff’s hopes and expectations for people with dementia to “come out” to care and the complexity of openness for LGBTQ people living with dementia. The study also points to the limitations of dominant paradigms of independence and the capacity to advocate for one’s self.
About the speakers:
Alexandre Baril is Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa. His work is situated at the crossroads of gender, queer, trans, disability/crip/Mad studies, critical gerontology and critical suicidology. His commitment to equity has earned him awards for his involvement in queer, trans and disabled/Mad communities, including the Canadian Disability Studies Association Tanis Doe Francophone Award (2020), the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion President’s Award at the University of Ottawa (2021), and the King Charles III Coronation Medal from the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario (2025). A prolific author who won the Young Researcher Award from the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Ottawa (2023), he is the author of Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide (2023) in open access.
Toni Calasanti, PhD, is Professor of Sociology at Virginia Tech. The co-author or -editor of 5 books, her research on the intersections of age, gender and social inequalities in relation to retirement, ageing bodies, ageism, masculinities, health, and caregiving have appeared in such outlets as Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences; The Gerontologist; Social Forces; Ageing & Society, and Men and Masculinities. A past Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Aging & Society, her NIA-funded research explored heterosexual and same-sex spousal/partner caregiving for spouses/partners living with dementia.
Chris Maddocks is a retired police officer living with dementia. She is living with early onset dementia, she was first diagnosed with vascular dementia and later also Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. Chris has extensive experiences of dementia advocacy and has been a key figure in raising awareness on dementia and LGBTQ+ issues in the UK and internationally. Last year she was awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) in the King’s Birthday Honours list.
Linn J Sandberg, PhD is Professor in Gender Studies at Södertörn University. Linn’s research focuses on the intersections of gender, sexuality, ageing and later life, and dementia. She is, together with Professor Richard Ward, the editor of Critical Dementia Studies: An Introduction (2023), the first volume in the series “Dementia in Critical Dialogue” published by Routledge. Linn is also the co-founder and convenor of the Critical Dementia Studies Network. Together with Anna Siverskog she conducted the research project “LGBTQ and dementia in policy and practice in Swedish dementia care” (2022-2025), funded by Forte.
Marjorie Silverman, Ph.D. in Social Work (McGill University), is a Full Professor in the School of Social Work at the University of Ottawa. With a critical social gerontology perspective and a background in clinical practice, she conducts research using creative qualitative methods on topics related to family care, dementia, place and space, sociology of the body, and trans and gender studies. She has published articles in journals such as Dementia, Journal of Aging Studies, Journal of Gerontological Social Work, International Journal of Care and Caring, Qualitative Social Work, Affilia, Canadian Journal on Aging, Canadian Journal of Law & Society, LGBTQ+ Family, and Sexualities.
Anna Siverskog is an Associate Professor in Gender Studies at Södertörn University, and in Social Work at Uppsala University. Her research interests revolve around age, gender, sexuality, power, and the life course with a specific interest in LGBTQ ageing, combining queer theory and critical gerontology. She is currently leading a mixed-method project on relationships, life experiences and health among lgbtq people 65+ in Sweden (FORTE), and another project “Tracing queer political histories in Croatia, Romania and Sweden through Intergenerational Narratives” (The foundation for Baltic and East European Studies).
Louisa Smith is an Associate Professor of Disability and Inclusion at Deakin University. Louisa’s research is at the intersection of disability studies, queer gerontology and policy studies. She uses participatory approaches to research to engage with people who are usually excluded from research, including people who do not use speech to communicate, people from refugee backgrounds, people living in institutional care and LGBTQ+ people living with dementia. Louisa’s is currently leading a four year Australian funded project to develop a model of care with LGBTQ+ people living with dementia, their care partners and supporters.
Arne Stinchcombe is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Healthy Aging Research Program (HARP) Lab. He holds a CIHR/PHAC Applied Public Health Research Chair in 2SLGBTQ+ health and aging, and serves as co-PI of the Ottawa site of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA). His research focuses on the psychosocial aspects of aging, with a particular emphasis on health equity and centering people with lived and living experience.
The symposium was enabled by a grant from the Nordic Gender Fund.