Attending the Society of Lights, Rhythms and Circadian Health Annual Meeting 2026: A Reflection from Benji
In September, on the weekend of the 11th to the 13th, I attended the 2026 annual meeting for The Society of Lights, Rhythms and Circadian Health (SLRCH) in Italy at La Statale, The University of Milan. The work being presented came from experts from a range of fields, many psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, but also engineers working on new light modulating tools and architects discussing our daily experience of natural and artificial light and our relationship to the spaces we occupy. I was particularly interested in the work being done to pick apart our sensitivity to light and its consequences at the retinal level as well as the light-conscious interventions being explored and implemented aimed at treating people with bipolar disorder.
It was fantastic to finally get to meet many of the collaborators in person who are connected to the research project that I am involved in, Ambient-BD. I was lucky enough to be awarded a poster award for the poster I presented: “Assessment of Dim Light Melatonin Onset (DLMO) in the Home Setting: Reproducibility & Association with Chronotype”. I had some great discussions with those who came up to hear about our work. From people dealing with similar challenges related to seasonal changes who offered great ideas for ways to incorporate direction of daylight change (days getting longer vs days getting shorter), to others with years of circadian rhythm research experience who were excited to bring up the pros and cons of the number and frequency of samples of melatonin a DLMO study might want to collect in an evening. I left these discussions with many new ideas I need to incorporate when discussing the data we have collected in the current Ambient-BD research project, as well as new ideas to explore in future research.
It’s exciting to see the work being done to better our understanding of the relationship with light and its importance to our health and wellbeing. If you find yourself to also be interested in finding out more about SLRCH, the organisers advertised that the next annual event will be hosted in Aarhus, Denmark in mid-June 2027.
Thank you to the Wellcome Trust for supporting the Ambient-BD research project, allowing me to attend this fantastic conference. Thank you also to my supervisors, co-authors and team members for the invaluable help you provided in putting together the work we presented.
Benji Kirke
