About
Dr Andrea Capstick, BA (Hons), EdD, FHEA is Associate Professor in the Centre for Applied Dementia Studies at the University of Bradford, UK, where she has taught for many years on the MSc Advanced Dementia Studies programme. Andrea joined what was then the Bradford Dementia Research Group in 1994, initially working with the group’s founder Professor Tom Kitwood until his untimely death in 1998. She was the inaugural leader of the University of Bradford’s first accredited programmes in dementia care, the Certificate in Dementia Care which started in 1995, and the BSc (Hons) Dementia Studies which began delivery in 2001.
With colleague Clive Baldwin, Andrea went on to write the text Tom Kitwood on Dementia: A reader and critical commentary (2007). In 2008 she completed her Doctorate in Education (EdD) on the subject of film and biographical narrative in dementia education. In 2011, she was successful in gaining NIHR (School for Social Care) funding to undertake the study ‘Can Participatory Video enhance social participation and well-being in long-term dementia care?’ and in 2015 she led the Patient and Public Involvement arm of the Department of Health funded study ‘What works in dementia care education?’ Andrea was also part of the management board of the University of Bradford’s Doctoral Training Centre on Transitions in Dementia Care from 2016-2021.
Andrea has a long-standing interest in both patient and public involvement and participatory research for people living with dementia and has pioneered a range of creative methods for enhancing the involvement of people living with dementia in research. She is currently a series editor (with Richard Ward, Linn Sandberg and James Fletcher) of the Routledge book series Dementia in Critical Dialogue, and a co-editor of the second book in the series A Critical History of Dementia Studies (forthcoming 2023). In recent years she has developed an interest in ethnodrama as a means of disseminating research findings, resulting in two short plays, Voices from the Frontline (based on research with care home staff about their experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic) and The Other Side of the Wall (based on ethnographic research carried out with four women living with dementia in a long-term care facility). Both plays foreground a further research interest in the ongoing impact of historical trauma in dementia.
Declaration of interests:
Fellow of the National Institute for Health Research (School for Social Care Research); Co-applicant on the National Institute for Health Research RfPB study NIHR200553 - RfPB Competition 37 ‘Exploring how the naturalistic skills of care-workers impact on the well-being of residents in care-homes: a micro-interactional study’.