The Doctoral Network HOMEDEM provides high-level training in design and dementia caregiving to a new generation of high achieving, early-stage researchers.

HOMEDEM focuses on the recent move across Europe towards supporting people with dementia (PwD) living at home (if that is what they themselves desire to do) for as long as possible with appropriate care. This move towards a reliance on the dynamic informal care relationships with and around the person with dementia, defined as “care constellation”. This calls for the HOMEDEM Doctoral Training Network to carry out research at several levels: a) the micro level, how dementia affects relationships between PwD and their care constellations; b) the meso level, understanding the changing needs of the home living environment; and c) at the macro level, understanding how care constellations navigate the complex care ecosystem of community-based support and services.

By equipping doctoral candidates with the transferable skills required for succeeding in careers at the crossroads of design and disciplines like psychosocial health sciences, economics and policy evaluation, the training in HOMEDEM will enable the PhD candidate researchers to respond to current and future care contexts. This will result in their being able to influence the way community-based care for PwD and their care constellation is organized, and how products, services and tools are co-designed and implemented within care contexts across Europe.

The consortium’s seven hiring research institutes include:

  • LUCA School of Arts (Belgium) - Research Unit Inter-Actions - Cluster ‘Caring. and design research’, Genk, Belgium.

  • KU Leuven (Belgium), Centre for Care Research and Consultancy (LUCAS), Leuven, Belgium

  • TU Eindhoven (The Netherlands), Expertise Center Dementia and Technology [ECDT] , Industrial Design, Systemic Change group, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

  • Maastricht University (The Netherlands), School for Mental Health and Neuroscience, Alzheimer Centrum Limburg, Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, Maastricht, the Netherlands.

  • University of Galway (Ireland), Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, Institute for Lifecourse & Society.

  • Politecnico di Milano, Department of Design (Italy) x 2, Polimi DeSIS Lab, & LABIRINT Research Lab, Milan, Italy.

  • University of Aveiro (Portugal), Department of Education and Psychology, Aveiro, Portugal; Research Units: CINTESIS@RISE (Center for Health Technology and Services Research, RISE Associate Laboratory) and ID+ (Research Institute for Design, Media and Culture).