Abstract:

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) occurs when a person experiences an impact to the head that is powerful enough to produce lasting damage to the brain. Commonly experienced symptoms such as cognitive difficulties, memory problems, social isolation, emotional dysregulation, personality changes and a whole host of other physical, social and emotional changes mean that life after TBI can become very challenging. Due to its sudden and unexpected nature, TBI can radically disrupt a person’s life, plunging them violently into forms of biological, medical and existential uncertainty and setting in motion a challenging, and often lifelong, period of adaptation as they come to terms with the various symptoms and difficulties that they are left with. 
Forwarding a version of post-traumatic subjectivity that is far more active and inventive than is often accounted for in the clinical literature surrounding brain injury, this paper brings a close focus to the sometimes-surprising forms of care, collective modes of repair, and moments of solidarity that emerge between attendees of a TBI rehabilitation centre in Manchester, UK. 
Through utilising an existential-phenomenological approach, with a particular emphasis on temporality, the paper primarily discusses these issues in relation to an attendee struggling with severe memory problems, showing how simple, everyday forms of domesticity and care at the centre, such as cooking meals and sharing stories with others about her past, allow this woman to maintain a vital nourishing connection to her pre-TBI life. 
The paper thus argues that these specifically temporal and relational aspects of care form an important resource in her rehabilitative trajectory. As I will show, they allow her to build up a sense of safety and stability in an otherwise precarious present, which then also allows her to start reengaging with the future in new ways. The examples I present in the paper therefore show just how important and life-sustaining these informal, and often small, acts of care can become for people when they are navigating the aftermath of a critical and life-limiting illness such as TBI. 

Bio:

Lee Gallagher is an anthropologist and post-doctoral researcher based within the Engaging Vulnerability research program and the department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at Uppsala University. His research explores the lives of people affected by Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and has so far focused upon post-TBI rehabilitation practices and spaces in the UK, exploring how TBI-affected persons maintain a sense of well-being in their lives through engaging in forms of community and peer-based support. 
The wider framework of his research is a medical anthropological approach that draws deeply upon existentialist and phenomenological ideas. With this approach he aims to problematise the narrow focus (and dominance) of clinical/pathological registers and forms of neuro-essentialism in brain injury research agendas, whilst also hopefully contributing to the discipline of anthropology more broadly by enriching and widening approaches to the study of critical illness, recovery and repair.
His current research project within the Engaging Vulnerability program explores how vulnerability comes to comprise a core structuring experience - and vital resource - for people living in the aftermath of TBI.