Constance Dupuis

	Host Institute	International Institute of Social Studies
	Topic	Towards an intergenerational approach to aging and environmental wellbeing
	Supervisors	Wendy Harcourt, Rosalba Icaza Garza, Peter Knorringa
	Secondment 1	University of Auckland
	Mentor	Yvonne Underhill-Sem
	Secondment 2	Defensoria del Vecino de Montevideo
	Mentor	Ana Agostino
	Fieldwork
Constance Dupuis did her bachelor’s degree in development and political economy at Trent University, Canada, and her master’s at the International Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands. Constance is interested in questioning narratives of ‘how things came to be’ and challenging binary thinking. She is inspired by decolonial and indigenous knowledges, and draws from intersectional feminisms.

Objectives of the research

The ESR will explore how the material existence of bodies are deeply embedded in political relations and changes in our global environment with a study of changing terrain of medical technologies in relation to end of life care. The ESR will look at the changing natureculture of our most intimate environment – the body – and its demise – as it is being shaped by rapidly changing medical technological practices. The exploration of ‘technobodies’ will look at well-being in the different care practices for the aging, exploring the current practices as well as futuristic visions of transhumanism underlying popular and scientific visions of medical intervention for prolonging life. Using a FPE lens, the ESR will explore the tensions and changes in medical approaches to end of life care, and how the possibilities of technologies are shaping the modern imagination of embodied well-being in the future. The study will identify and work with the medical scientific community and communities that are looking at alternative medical practices around care for the aging including popular (journalist and fiction) writers exploring these themes in their work.

Expected Results

The research will identify the tensions in public debates around medical technologies, technoscience and future understandings of well-being.

Progress update

Constance is currently working to pivot the focus of her first article (first draft completed for her design seminar), was originally focused on unpacking mainstream discourses of aging and understanding how theses discourses travel, compete and reinvent themselves in different contexts. With COVID-19, the public dialogue about aging and the elderly has increased in volume but perhaps narrowed in scope, with narratives almost exclusively focused on the elderly as victims. Attention and scrutiny of long-term care institutions is needed, but many of the problems that have resulted in the heartbreaking loss of life in this pandemic long predate the virus. What else needs to be seen and heard in these times when it comes to our elders? What is made absent because of this focus? These are some of the concerns she is working to take up in her theoretical piece on aging, as well as inspiring a methodology chapter reflecting on ethics and risk in research. As a member of the WEGO network, she continues to participate on the core organizing team of the Degrowth Conference 2021.