Sociology Professor Earns Prestigious Fellowship to Support Alzheimer’s Research

Renée Lynn Beard’s first job, as a teenager, was at a local nursing home, where she first encountered someone with Alzheimer’s disease.

“She was sequestered far away from the nurses’ station and all social spaces, because staff and residents alike were convinced that she was ‘not there,’” recalls Beard, an associate professor of sociology at the College. “My experiences told me otherwise and that has stayed with me to this day.”

It set her on a course to study the sociology of aging and, specifically, Alzheimer’s disease, illness narratives, medical sociology, social gerontology and social movements. Her book, “Living with Alzheimer’s: Managing Memory Loss, Identity, and Illness” was published by NYU Press in April 2016.

“Ultimately, this is a story about living with Alzheimer’s; that is, how life continues long after diagnosis,” she wrote on rorotoko.com, a website that publishes intellectual interviews.

The title of the book indicates the focus of her research, and also alludes back to that first experience with an Alzheimer’s patient: People can live with this disease, as opposed to giving up hope upon diagnosis. Through her research, she found that many people with Alzheimer’s are able to actively and deliberately navigate their lives, despite the social stigma of incompetence surrounding the disease.

Beard argues that the exclusively negative portrayals of the disease are not only inaccurate, but a barrier to treatment. She focuses on the Alzheimer’s patient, as opposed to the caregiver’s perspective, drawing from intensive interviews and observations of 100 seniors undergoing cognitive evaluation and post-diagnosis interviews with individuals experiencing late-in-life forgetfulness.

Not only does Alzheimer’s affect each patient in a different way and at differing speeds, there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to treatment.

“Those who are currently seniors or live with dementia — and all of us as we ourselves age — would be best served by removing our tendency to universalize aging experiences,” she says. “Such homogenizing in a gendered, race-based and class-divided society is not only a mistake but tolerates neglect of the most deeply disenfranchised among us and ignores the need for meaningful change on the societal level.”

In March, Beard was named a 2017 Frederick Burkhardt Residential Fellow, a prestigious grant that provides a stipend and research budget of over $100,000 to support a proposed research project. She will continue her work on Alzheimer’s research at the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston during the 2017-2018 academic year.

Written by Maura Sullivan Hill for the Spring 2017 issue of Holy Cross Magazine

About Holy Cross Magazine

Holy Cross Magazine (HCM) is the quarterly alumni publication of the College of the Holy Cross. The award-winning publication is mailed to alumni and friends of the College and includes intriguing profiles, make-you-think features, alumni news, exclusive photos and more. Visit magazine.holycross.edu/about to contact HCM, submit alumni class notes, milestones, or letters to the editor.