Background

Stéphane Adam is a part time lecturer at the University of Liège. He is also in charge of the Clinical Psychology of Ageing Centre, and is regularly invited to give courses at Louvain-La-Neuve, Lille, Chambéry, Montpellier and Paris. If he is today well established as a researcher at the ULg, his background is a little unusual, and it has seen him swing between the world of research and the clinical world. A background which has strongly shaped his vision of research, which for him should remain in constant interaction between clinicians, but also with other disciplines.

A student in psychology Stéphane Adam is interested in a recent direction taken within the research environment, neuropsychology. This discipline focuses on the effects of brain lesions on people’s behaviour. In 1998, having completed his studies, he was hired by the Brühl Hospital Centre at Liège for a pilot experiment funded by the CHU: the creation of a centre dedicated to the health care of people affected by Alzheimer’s disease (Centre de Jour de la Mémoire, directed by Professor Salmon).

It was thanks to this experience that the psychologist was invited to Paris to present his work, research which would lead to a first publication on knitting. This in effect enabled people affected by the disease to be helped to maintain a daily activity and to improve the patient’s quality of life, as well as the people around them. This publication represented the initial steps of his doctorate, which he began in 1999 at Louvain-La-Neuve before progressively migrating to Liège and defending it in 2004. His activities at the two universities allowed him to work side by side with francophone researchers with renowned reputations in neuropsychology: Martial Van der Linden and Thierry Meulemans (ULg), and Xavier Seron (UCL).

He then worked for a year at the Hôpital de Fraiture in Condroz, where he developed a memory day care centre and clinic to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and facilitate appropriate health care for it. He was subsequently hired by the University of Liège as a senior registrar. A year later he applied for the post of lecturer in the clinical psychology of ageing, a post he holds to this day and which allows him to continue in a more sustained way his research on the impact of the age of retirement on the physical and mental health of elder people.