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Dementia Researcher Blogs episodes
- Bernie McInally - Not a good advert for Dementia
Bernie McInally narrates his blog written for Dementia Researcher.
In this blog, Bernie reflects on his work supporting the Scottish Dementia Brain Tissue Bank, using a telephone cognitive assessment to explore a bigger question about identity, diagnosis and individuality. A single sharp comment from a woman with mild Alzheimer’s disease prompts him to ask whether researchers, healthcare staff and policymakers sometimes overstate the idea of a single “dementia community”. The blog argues that people do not lose their life history, humour, opinions or preferences because of a diagnosis. Instead, dementia becomes one part of a person’s life, not the whole of who they are.
https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-not-a-good-advert-for-dementia/
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Bernie McInally is a Clinical Studies Officer at NHS Lothian and the Neuroprogressive and Dementia Network. Bernie's background is in Nursing, working in Mental Health and with Older People. He retired from full time NHS clinical work, and is now back working in Clinical Research supporting delivery of the Enabling Research in Care Homes (ENRICH) Scotland. He is passionate about research delivery, and opening access to people in all communities.
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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers, drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk
This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, who we thank for their ongoing support.
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9 min - Emily Spencer - The Hidden Work of Finishing a PhD
Emily Spencer narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.
In this blog, Emily reflects on being around four months from her planned PhD submission date, and the amount of work still sitting beneath the surface. She writes about the pressure of finishing complex analysis, using a Gantt chart to keep thesis writing on track, the boost of a writing retreat, and the sudden disruption of conference season. The blog also explores the tension between preparing presentations, writing journal papers, applying for fellowships, and protecting enough time to finish the thesis. An unsuccessful fellowship application becomes, unexpectedly, a relief, allowing her to focus on completing the current project and reaching the viva with less added pressure.
https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-the-hidden-work-of-finishing-a-phd/
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Emily Spencer is a PhD Student at University College London, looking at improving how GPs communicate with people with dementia and their family carers about their future care. Emily previously had a 5-year career break to pursue a career as a musician, and has previously undertaken research on improving the care people with dementia receive from their GP practice, as well as end-of-life and palliative care provision in the community. Emily is also a new mum and will be writing about her experiences navigating motherhood and a research career.
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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers; drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk
This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, whom we thank for their ongoing support.
--
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7 min - Dr Connor Richardson - Learning to Belong Somewhere New
Dr Connor Richardson narrates his blog written for Dementia Researcher.
What is it actually like to start over somewhere new? After nearly a decade at Newcastle, where he did his undergraduate degree right through to his postdoc, Connor moved to the University of Edinburgh in December 2025.
This blog looks at the other side of leaving. He writes about the energy of meeting people with fresh eyes, the strange comfort of mundane admin in those first few days, and the imposter syndrome that arrives when the evidence base you relied on for belonging is suddenly somewhere else. His advice when confidence takes a knock is to communicate early, and above all to slow down rather than try to match anyone else's pace.
https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-learning-to-belong-somewhere-new/
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Dr Connor Richardson is a Neuro-epidemiology Research Associate at The University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on using advanced statistical modelling and machine learning to measure dementia risk. Connor blogs about his research, Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion, and sometimes his Pomapoo’s.
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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers; drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk
This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, whom we thank for their ongoing support.
--
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6 min - Dr Maria Drummond - What My First Major NIHR Award Taught Me
Dr Maria Drummond narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.
There is a stage most researchers never write about: the stretch between a positive funding decision and actually getting started. This blog is about exactly that. It follows the news of a first major NIHR award arriving on a Friday afternoon at a farm park, the relief and disbelief of the moment, and then the confusion when the award turns out to be conditional. Over the following five months come rounds of committee feedback, clarifications and revisions, along with a quiet fear that asking too many questions will look like weakness. The turning point is a passing comment from another Principal Investigator about the long wait after their own positive outcome, which leads to the reassurance that conditional awards and iterative feedback are entirely normal. It ends by asking why funding success is so often presented as a clean, decisive win when the reality is iterative, negotiated and full of near misses. You can read it or listen to the audio narration.
https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-what-my-first-major-nihr-award-taught-me/
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Dr Maria Drummond is Team Leader at ENRICH Scotland, based at the University of Glasgow. A registered nurse and district nurse by background, Maria spent ten years working in the Glasgow City District Nursing service before moving into research in 2021. She also has five years of experience working in older adult care homes, including with people living with dementia. Her research focuses on care homes and is motivated by the priorities of staff, residents and people with lived experience. Funded through the NIHR Research Programme for Social Care, Maria is passionate about improving access to research involvement, evidence based practice and better outcomes for people living and working in care home settings.
Find Maria on LinkedIn
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6 min - The Report, Out Loud: Listening to Early Career Researchers
This episode works through Listening to Early Career Researchers, the 2022 survey report from UCL and ISTAART PEERs. It captured the views of early career researchers across the world.
Work is currently underways to run this same survey again, so we thought this was a good time to recap on the original findings.
The discussion follows the data rather than the headlines: why people come into dementia research, what keeps them awake at night, and why so many told us they were considering leaving the field. It ends on a more hopeful note about what it would take to bring people back.
A note on how this was made. The audio is an AI generated discussion, produced using Google's NotebookLM from the text of the report. The two voices are synthetic, and the framing, emphasis and phrasing are the model's rather than ours. We have checked it against the source for accuracy, but it is best treated as a way into the report rather than a replacement for reading it.
This is a pilot, and we are trying it out to see whether it is worth doing more of. We would genuinely like to know what you think: whether it worked for you, what fell flat, and whether you would like more episodes like this. Do let us know.
Reference: Smith, AM., Shaaban, C.E., Bartels, S.L., Welikovitch, L., Brum, W., Folarin, R. (2022). Listening to Early Career Researchers. University College London, ISTAART PIA to Elevate Early Career Researchers.
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24 min - Dr Tatiana A. Giovannucci - If I Fall Behind, I'll Fall Into Torpor
Dr Tatiana A. Giovannucc narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.
Tatiana's blog is not what you might expect. It is a speculative fiction, set in a near future where AI-driven energy demands and climate collapse have forced governments to ration heating and power, and academics have been classified as non-essential. The only escape from enforced hibernation, which the world calls "the long sleep", is to prove your research is exceptional enough to warrant the electricity. Tatiana's narrator is hours from her exemption panel interview, performing a protein assay to calm her nerves, and asking herself whether she is "there yet".
The neuroscience is real: the history of torpor research, the compounds that could induce it, the brain regions involved.
https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-if-i-fall-behind-ill-fall-into-torpor/
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Dr Tatiana A. Giovannucci is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at UCL's Institute of Neurology, Dementia Research Centre and UK Dementia Research Institute, studying the turnover of proteins relevant to neurodegeneration. She holds an Alzheimer's Association Research Fellowship and is part of a Race Against Dementia team, having completed her PhD at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm before joining UCL in 2022. Originally from Medellín, Colombia, she can usually be found upside down doing acroyoga when not in the lab.
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9 min - Beccy Owen - The Trials and Tribulations of Electrophysiology
Beccy Owen narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.
Electrophysiology has taken up roughly 80% of Beccy's thoughts this past year, so she has written about it. Beccy is a PhD student at the University of Warwick studying how tau drives ion channel dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease, and she uses whole-cell patch-clamp and extracellular field recordings to do it. In this blog she walks through what these techniques actually involve.
She writes about crying the first time she got a stable recording, dreaming about pipette tips, and the friend who genuinely wondered if she would have to change projects. The science is serious. The journey to being any good at it is, by Beccy's own account, fairly chaotic.
https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-the-trials-and-tribulations-of-electrophysiology/
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Beccy Owen is a PhD Researcher at the University of Warwick, exploring how tau pathology disrupts neuronal ion channels and brain network activity in Alzheimer’s disease. As part of the Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Programme, her work uses electrophysiology to better understand the molecular drivers of neurodegeneration. Originally from the Welsh countryside, Beccy’s passion for dementia research was shaped during her postgraduate studies and through personal experience with a family member living with the condition. She will be sharing her journey, insights, and lessons learned throughout her PhD here on the blog.
Find Becky on LinkedIn
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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers; drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk
This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, whom we thank for their ongoing support.
--
Leave us a Tip
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10 min - Dr Sam Moxon - Unexpected Things Dementia Teaches us About Time
Dr Sam Moxon narrates his blog written for Dementia Researcher.
We tend to picture dementia as a slow decline measured in months and years, tracked through cognitive scores and longitudinal data. Sam has watched several relatives live with the condition, and from a family seat it looks nothing like a line on a graph. In this blog he writes about his grandfather, who some days could hold a full conversation and other days had no idea who Sam was. Time stopped behaving normally. It folded back on itself when a question got asked again five minutes later, stretched out as his grandfather paused to think, then collapsed entirely after long spells of apparent stability.
In this blog Sam asks a question that should matter to every dementia researcher: when we say a therapy slows progression, do we mean more real time with the people we love, or just a graph that looks better? Behind every data point is an experience, and it might look nothing like the trend in our papers.
https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-unexpected-things-dementia-teaches-us-about-time/
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Dr Sam Moxon is a biomaterials Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham. His expertise lies at the interface between biology and engineering. His PhD focused on regenerative medicine, and he now develops 3D bioprinting techniques with human stem cells to better understand and treat degenerative diseases. He is also the Founder and CEO of Aegis FibreTech. Outside of the lab, he hikes through the Lake District and is an expert on all things Disney.
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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers; drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk
This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, whom we thank for their ongoing support.
--
Leave us a Tip
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
- https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/
- https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/
- https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunity
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- https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.social
Download and Register with our Community App:
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5 min - Rahul Sidhu - Overcoming the Fear of Public Speaking
Rahul Sidhu narrates his blog written for Dementia Researcher.
Rahul used to dread public speaking more than data analysis or academic scrutiny. A few years on, he gives talks to full rooms, chairs sessions at international conferences in Toronto and Washington DC, and speaks as a Global Ambassador for the Alzheimer's Association. In this blog he shares the seven things that got him there, from accepting that nobody starts good at this, to building slides that help rather than hinder, to speaking with energy instead of just slowing down. His point throughout is that strong speaking is a trainable skill, not a talent you either have or you don't. The nerves never fully went away. He just learnt to work with them, and so can you.
https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-overcoming-the-fear-of-public-speaking/
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Rahul Sidhu is a PhD student at The University of Sheffield, focusing on the effects of heart disease on dementia in preclinical models of Alzheimer's disease. His research aims to uncover how cardiovascular health influences neurodegenerative conditions, potentially leading to novel therapeutic strategies. Find Rahul on LinkedIn
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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers; drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk
This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, whom we thank for their ongoing support.
--
Leave us a Tip
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
- https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/
- https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/
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Download and Register with our Community App:
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8 min - Dr Clíona Farrell - It’s getting (too) hot in here; the climate crisis and brain health
Dr Clíona Farrell narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.
Clíona writes from this year's Hot Brain conference, an annual meeting hosted by UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology and The Lancet Neurology that asks what the climate crisis is doing to our brains. She walks through what's already known (air pollution is now a recognised modifiable risk factor for dementia), what's emerging (people with dementia were among the leading causes of excess deaths during the 2022 UK heatwave), and the questions still wide open. She also covers thermoregulation research, the case for saunas and hot-water immersion as protective strategies, and a quietly important methodological point for every lab: stop writing "room temperature" in your methods section. A blog for anyone who has been quietly despairing about the climate and wondering what it has to do with dementia research.
https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-its-getting-too-hot-in-here-the-climate-crisis-brain-health/
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Dr Clíona Farrell is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the UK Dementia Research Institute at University College London. Her work focuses on understanding neuroinflammation in Down syndrome, both prior to, and in response to, Alzheimer’s disease pathology. Originally from Dublin, Ireland, Clíona completed her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience in Trinity College, and then worked as a research assistant in the Royal College of Surgeons studying ALS and Parkinson’s disease. She also knows the secret behind scooping the perfect 99 ice-cream cone.
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Enjoy listening? We're always looking for new bloggers, drop us a line. http://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk
This podcast is brought to you by University College London in association with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, Alzheimer's Association, Alzheimer's Research UK, Alzheimer's Society and Race Against Dementia, who we thank for their ongoing support.
--
Leave us a Tip
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8 min
About Dementia Researcher Blogs
From the publisher's feed
Dementia Researcher blogs are written and then narrated by the authors. Through this podcast channel, we share the narrations, so you can listen back where ever you get your podcasts, as well as on…
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