22 Oct 2023

Dr Barbara Barbosa Neves: Recording loneliness in Aged Care

From Sunday Morning, 11:25 am on 22 October 2023

The team behind a unique research project looking into loneliness in aged care homes in Australia has garnered international attention for its approach. 

Study lead, Monash University Sociologist Dr Barbara Barbosa Neves worked with award-winning author Josephine Wilson and with illustrator-artist Amanda Brooks to create an academic paper, but with creative non-fiction and comic book-style art. 

Barbara joins us to talk about the study and how using creatives can help us better understand academic data. 

“Patricia is 79 and sits on a plastic chair and looks out the window.”

Frail. How Patricia hates that word, but sometimes it is true: she feels as fragile as a feather, as hollow as old bone, liable to be blown off her chair, out the window and away in the blue sky. Sometimes she would like to open the window and let herself be taken, leaving her empty body sitting here on the plastic chair, like a shell washed up on the beach. Photo: Amanda Brooks