Peter Simonsen is Professor of European Literature and research manager at the Department for the Study of Culture at the University of Southern Denmark.
Professor Simonsen has researched the contemporary literary representation of life as an elderly individual in the Scandinavian welfare state.
He is pushing this research into the direction of a comprehensive analysis of how literary texts enable us to imagine what it is like to be a person with dementia, as well as to be a relative or caregiver to a person with dementia.
A healthy public debate about important societal challenges requires a common and scientifically sound basis.