Stamps Scholar Spotlight: Sumita Strander '18

I am studying dementia care for Indian elderly, both in India and in the United States. To do this, I have conducted fieldwork both in a variety of settings in Calcutta, India and in an "Indian Cultural Unit" of a nursing home in New Jersey, USA. Informed by previous anthropological and clinical work, but grounded in ethnographic observations and interpretations, I hope to contribute to a discussion on the relationship between "culture" and "care." More specifically, I am interested in learning not just about how dementia care varies across contexts but also about seemingly underlying similarities inherent to the field. With the world becoming increasingly globalized, and with its population living longer than ever before, I also hope to use these findings to help us understand more concretely what dementia care could - and perhaps should - look like in the future.

More from Sumita.