Fellow Focus: Isabel Buyers

In this conversation with Pathways Fellow Brooke Luokkala, 2025-26 Undergraduate Humanities Honors Fellow Isabel Buyers discusses her thesis project on representations of dementia in the US and Latin America and how the Fox Center's 2025-26 research theme "Life/Story" allows her to preserve collective memory through the preservation of individual stories.

Brooke Luokkala: Thanks for joining me, Isabel. Could you tell me about your project?  

Isabel Buyers: I'm a Neuroscience and Spanish double major, so my project is really a combination of those passions. I'm focusing on representations of dementia in Latin American literature and film and comparing them to how dementia is portrayed in U.S. media. I really want to explore how cultural norms might affect the burdens caregivers feel or the expectations they have about the disease.  

BL: Great, and how does your thesis project fit the Fox Center’s 2025-26 research theme “Life/Story”? What does "Life/Story" mean to you as a research theme?   

IB: My project fits well with the theme “Life/Story” because I’m delving into the lives of several individuals who either are living with dementia, lived with dementia, or cared for someone with dementia. As I've started writing, I’ve realized that my project has become much more political than I expected. Many of the individuals I study lived through authoritarian regimes like the dictatorships in Argentina and Chile, and as they lose their personal memories, the collective memory of political atrocities risks fading with them. 

For me, the theme “Life/Story” is about how personal stories connect to broader histories that continue to shape how we understand the present. As these individuals, many of whom were activists or witnesses to violence, begin to lose their memories, the collective memory of those regimes also starts to fade. It’s a reminder of how fragile historical memory can be, and how important it is for communities to preserve and retell these stories so that the injustices of the past are not forgotten or repeated. 

BL: What are you looking forward to most about being a Fox Fellow?  

IB: I’m really looking forward to talking with the other Fellows, especially those in different fields, such as history, to hear more about how they conduct research. I’m familiar with Spanish language and neuroscience as academic fields, but a lot of the research I have found myself doing this year is entirely new to me. So I’m definitely excited to get insight from the other [Undergraduate Humanities Honors] Fellows.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.