Social Connection

People

Professor Brian Lawlor, Principal Investigator, Social Connection

Professor Brian A. Lawlor, MD, is Connolly Norman Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin and Consultant Psychiatrist for the Elderly at St Patrick’s and St James’s Hospitals. Professor Lawlor initially trained in internal medicine in Ireland and later in psychiatry in the United States, completing a residency at the University of Florida and a fellowship in neuropharmacology at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He was Chief of Geriatric Psychiatry at Mount Sinai before returning to Dublin in 1991 to take his current position.

Professor Lawlor’s research interests include the neurobiology of Alzheimer’s Disease, behavioral and psychiatric complications of Alzheimer’s Disease, late-life depression and late-life dysthymia. He has been published widely, particularly in the areas of serotonin in Alzheimer’s disease and behavioral complications of Alzheimer’s, and edited a book entitled Behavioural Complications in Alzheimer’s Disease, (APA Press 1995) and has co-edited Assessment Scales in Old Age Psychiatry (Dunitz 1999), Treatment of Behavioural and Psychological Symptoms in Dementia (2000) and Clinical Guidelines in Old Age Psychiatry (Dunitz 2001). He is Editor-in-Chief of the Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine and Associate Editor of International Psychogeriatrics and the Journal of Serotonin Research.

Dr David Prenderagast, co-Principal Investigator (Intel), Social Connection
Intel Digital Health Group

Dr David Prendergast is a senior ethnographic researcher in Health Research and Innovation, Digital Health group and is the Intel Liaison to the Social Connection strand of the TRIL Centre. He received his doctorate in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University following a study of intergenerational relationships and family change in South Korea. He has since worked on a number of research projects including an ESRC study of death and dying in the United Kingdom and the provision of home care in Ireland. Since joining Intel he has been involved in several studies including the Global Ageing Experience Project. He has published in a wide number of peer reviewed academic journals and has written two books on the subject of ageing. The first was published in 2005 and is titled From Elder to Ancestor: Old Age, Death and Inheritance in Modern Korea and the other, No Place Like Home was co-authored with colleagues from Trinity College Dublin where he was senior researcher in ageing and social policy