Join Aagje Swinnen, PhD, of Maastricht University for a thought-provoking conversation about how shared reading can help us rethink loneliness, burnout, aging, and what it means to live a good life.

Drawing on two collaborative research projects in Amsterdam, Swinnen will explore Shared Reading as a means of challenging common cultural narratives about loneliness and burnout. Her research considers how expectations around productivity, independence, and “successful aging” shape our understanding of these experiences and how reading and discussing literature together can open new perspectives.

Swinnen is a professor of Aging Studies at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Originally trained as a literary scholar, her research spans critical aging and dementia studies, literature and the arts, participatory arts in dementia care, creativity later in life, and age-inclusive universities. She is co-founder of the European Network in Aging Studies and co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Aging (2024) and Age, Culture, Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Tea and Cake: 4–6 p.m.