Marie Savundranayagam is an Associate Professor in the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She completed her bachelor's degree from the Combined Honours Program in Arts & Science and Psychology at McMaster University in Canada. She earned her Masters and Ph.D. in Gerontology, with a concentration in Health Care Outcomes Management and Research, at the University of Kansas. She also completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the University of Western Ontario in the School of Communication Sciences and Disorders.

Dr. Savundranayagam's research focuses on improving caregiving relationships through enhanced communication, systematically identifying ways to enhance personhood for persons with Alzheimer's disease or related dementias, and uncovering the mechanisms by which caregiver interventions are effective. She received the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's 'Age Plus' Award for her work on communication problems and burden among family caregivers. As a Hartford Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholar, Dr. Savundranayagam investigated the impact of a psychoeducational program on caregiver burden of spouses/partners. Dr. Savundranayagam's current research, funded by a New Investigator Research Grant from the Alzheimer's Association and UWM's Research Growth Initiative, aims to identify communication strategies used by caregivers to resolve communication breakdowns, to assess the effectiveness of these strategies, and to investigate the differential impact of effective versus ineffective strategies in predicting caregiver burden.

Dr. Savundranayagam teaches classes in social gerontology, applied gerontology, family development, and family and long-term care across the life course.

Selected Publications:

Savundranayagam, M. Y., Dilley, L. J., & Basting, A. (2011). StoryCorps Memory Loss Initiative: Enhancing personhood for storytellers with memory loss. Dementia: The International Journal of Social Research and Practice. doi:10.1177/1471301211408123

Savundranayagam, M. Y., M. Y., & Orange, J. B. (2011). Relationships between appraisals of caregiver communication strategies and burden among spouses and adult-children. International Psychogeriatrics. doi:10.1017/S1041610211000408

Savundranayagam, M. Y., Montgomery, R. J. V., & Kosloski, K. (2011). A dimensional analysis of caregiver burden among spouses and adult-children. The Gerontologist. 51(3), 321-331. doi: 10.1093/geront/gnq102

Savundranayagam, M. Y., Montgomery, R. J. V., Kosloski, K., & Little, T. D. (2011). Impact of a psychoeducational program on three types of caregiver burden among spouses. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. 26(4), 388-296. doi:10.1002/gps.2538

Savundranayagam, M. Y., & Brintnall-Peterson, M. (2010). Testing self-efficacy as a pathway that supports self care among family caregivers in a psychoeducational intervention. Journal of Family Social Work, 13(2), 149-162.

Savundranayagam, M. Y., & Montgomery, R. J. V. (2010). Impact of role discrepancies on caregiver burden among spouses. Research on Aging, 32(2), 175-199.

Savundranayagam, M. Y., & Ryan, E. B. (2008). Social psychological aspects of communication and aging. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 28(1), 51-72.

Savundranayagam, M. Y., Ryan, E. B., Anas, A., & Orange, J. B. (2007). Communication and dementia: Staff perceptions of conversational strategies. Clinical Gerontologist, 31(2), 47 - 63.

Savundranayagam, M. Y., Hummert, M. L., & Montgomery, R. J. V. (2005). Investigating the effects of communication problems on caregiver burden. Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, 60B (1), S48-S55.