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The science and culture of sleep and sleeplessness at Free Word Lecture Theatre & Hall

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Time 11:15
Date 10/01/18
Price Free

Join Free Word for a day of informal talks with neuroscientists, clinicians, historians, artists, and cultural critics as they discuss the science and culture of sleep and sleeplessness.

Sleep is an enormous part of our lives and has fascinated scientists, artists and writers for centuries: Why do we sleep? And why do we sometimes struggle to sleep?

Speakers:

Professor Nick Franks - Professor Franks from Imperial College’s Department of Life Sciences is researching the question: What brain mechanisms make sleep inescapable? He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2011 for his pioneering research on anaesthetics and sleep.

Professor Matthew Beaumont - Professor Beaumont is a Professor of English at University College London and the author of Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London, among other books. He is currently writing a book on insomnia.

Dr Guy Meadows - Dr Guy Meadows is Co-Founder and Clinical Director of The Sleep School. He specialises in the non-drug based treatment of chronic insomnia and is the author of The Sleep Book: How to Sleep Well Every Night.

Kimberley Whitehead - Kimberley Whitehead is a Clinical Research Associate based in University College London’s Department of Neuroscience and has a special interest in rapid eye movement (dream) sleep and its role in early brain development.

Professor Simon Morgan Wortham - Professor Wortham is a Professor of English in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Kingston University. He is the author of The Poetics of Sleep: From Aristotle to Nancy, among other books.

Dr Fran Knight - Dr Fran Knight is a Lecturer at University College London’s Institute of Education. She is researching the effects of disturbed sleep on learning and behaviour in children.

Dr Anna Katharina Schaffner - Dr Schaffner is a Reader in Comparative Literature and Medical Humanities at the University of Kent. She researches the history of exhaustion from classical antiquity to the present day and is the author of Exhaustion: A History.

Dr Sasha Handley - Dr Handley is a Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at The University of Manchester. Her research explores practices relating to sleep in seventeenth and eighteenth-century English society and the ways in which they shaped sleep-quality. She is the author of Sleep in Early Modern England.

Andrew Carnie - Andrew Carnie is an artist who is currently working on a project about sleep and sleeplessness in collaboration with Kimberley Whitehead and Professor Matthew Beaumont. His work has been exhibited at the Science Museum in London, the Whitechapel Gallery in London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Dr Sofia Eriksson - Dr Sofia Eriksson is a consultant neurologist with a special interest in sleep disorders at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London.

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