Research Catalogue

research expositions

• Musified togetherness: Co-singing in families living with dementia (last edited: 2023) author(s): Helene Waage This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  My PhD project aims to explore some of the potentials – and related implications – of low-threshold daily-life singing in the context of people living with dementia and their close ones. A central issue is how people with dementia and their relatives might use, and experience, singing as an integrated part of communication and interaction in their daily life. Accordingly, I propose the concept of co-singing to offer a supplemental approach to (indirect) music therapy and to music-therapeutic caregiving and caregiver singing developed within professional dementia care. Co-singing highlights singing as a relational activity – a form of togetherness – and draws on the people’s own experiences with singing throughout their lives. The project’s empirical material consists of an exploratory case study inspired by participatory action research. The participants were an older woman living with dementia and her daughter. Together, we explored simple singing activities which they could integrate into their daily lives based on their preferences, interests and previous experiences. Theoretically, the PhD project is grounded in Karen Barad’s agential realism and theories connected to affirmative philosophy, neuropsychology and neurophysiology. The thesis’ research questions engage different aspects of co-singing as practice and experience; its underlying processes and mechanisms; and its conceptual implications. Thus, the research process unveils different aspects of co-singing in families living with dementia as a material-discursive practice (Barad, 2007). Through theoretical and empirical exploration and diffraction, I introduce multiple perspectives to the notion of co-singing in families living with dementia. The thesis contributes to new knowledge by exploring and weaving together different theories and research findings with the case study and in this way illuminating affirmative and relational aspects of everyday singing for people with dementia and their close ones. Furthermore, the thesis proposes “co-singing” and various forms of “musified togetherness” as suitable terms and concepts – and examples of everyday practices – to convey the implications of such an approach to singing and dementia. Through its exploration via diffractive analysis in several layers, the thesis also provides a methodological contribution to performative and post-qualitative research.
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