Collaborations at GBHI, Trinity College Dublin
Collaborations Across Trinity
GBHI has a wealth of strong partnerships across Trinity, both educational and research based, which augment the expertise of our core faculty. Many of these partnerships contribute directly to the learning experience, and fellows are facilitated and supported to avail of these connections to help further their development.
One of the great strengths of GBHI at Trinity is the transdisciplinary interactions across faculties, including the creative arts, engineering, humanities, social sciences and psychology. An approach which is showcased in our annual Creative Brain Week, which highlights the intersection of science, society, art and the brain.
How to live longer and better is a key challenge for our aging world. Located at St. James’s Hospital, Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing brings clinical care, research, education and creative life together under the one roof and is the ideal place to explore and understand healthy brain ageing and what really matters to the lives of older people.
Fellows will also have access to experts in aging and dementia and can experience TILDA, the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, a well-established member of the HRS international family of studies of aging. Learn more below:
Research Institutes and Schools
At Trinity, GBHI is hosted by the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience (TCIN), with researchers from a wide range of disciplines including psychology, psychiatry, physiology, pharmacology, medicine, biochemistry, engineering, and genetics, among others. These diverse disciplinary origins contribute to its core activities: promoting and supporting interdisciplinary basic and translational research, as well as teaching, public engagement, and national leadership in neuroscience, all of which is accessible to interested fellows as part of the fellowship experience.
GBHI has strong links with Trinity's Schools of Medicine, Psychology, and Engineering. Additionally we collaborate with faculty from a number of other schools and departments, including the School of Education and School of Creative Arts.
Clinical, Health and Science
In the clinical, health and scientific space we are connected to educational, research centers and projects including The Centre for Health Policy, The Centre for Global Health, the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), the Trinity Centre for Ageing and Intellectual Disability, and the recently established Dementia Trials Ireland.
Trinity’s two major teaching hospitals are St. James’s Hospital, which incorporates the Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing, and Tallaght University Hospital. Clinical and lived experiences (CLE) in all aspects of brain health and dementia care across multiple clinical disciplines, and including arts and health, are provided for fellows at these clinical sites under the direction of GBHI clinical faculty. Fellows also have the opportunity to explore a range of other clinical and community services experiences.
Arts, Humanities and Design
We also have strong connections with colleagues' activities in the arts, humanities and design, linking with initiatives such as the Trinity Long Room Hub, the Creative Arts Practice interdisciplinary research theme, and TrinityHaus which focuses on the co-creation and intersection between the built environment, health and wellbeing.
GBHI at Trinity also leads Creative Brain Week, an annual online and in person event and platform which explores and celebrates how brain science and creativity collide to seed new ideas in social development, technology, entrepreneurship, wellbeing and physical, mental and brain health across the life cycle.
Left: GBHI Community members with the Head of the School of Education and the Provost of Trinity College Dublin. | Right: Atlantic Fellows attend a session hosted by the Abbey Theatre.
Our Wider Network
GBHI has a wide network of local and national collaborators, charities and partners including the Alzheimer Society of Ireland and the housing agency, Respond, that provide fellows with access to many policy and advocacy aspects of dementia and provide opportunities for the exploration and appreciation of the real-life implications of the social determinants of brain health. With Respond, we have embarked on a range of projects to develop the concept of brain health and housing, including the creation of a Brain Healthy Village.
Supporting our work in GBHI, both in Dublin and San Francisco, is our Lived Experience Group, who’s Irish members regularly join our activities on site. We also collaborate with other groups and initiatives supporting Public Person Involvement (PPI) and engaged research, such as Trinity PPI Ignite, and the Alzheimer Society of Ireland's Dementia Research Advisory Team.
Leadership in arts for brain health is a key focus for GBHI at Trinity and we have many collaborations in the field of arts, creativity and the humanities, working with both cultural institutions, such as Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) and the Abbey Theatre, and community based arts initiatives.
