The pandemic has increased the urgency and desire to understand and take action around the many complex questions around futures of ageing.

The Faculty of Social Sciences and Law (FSSL) Ageing research group would like to invite academics from across disciplines to join us in creating a strong, internal interdisciplinary ageing research community to explore and work together on the broad theme of ‘Ageing Futures’.  

Many of us in FSSL have been researching social aspects of ageing such as care, bereavement, housing, work, diversity and inclusion, intergenerational relationships, age-friendly environments and digital ageing, but we know there are also colleagues in the arts and humanities, in engineering and in physical and medical sciences with wide ranging interests in ageing futures too. 

We are all by now familiar with the rhetoric of demographic ageing – the age of longevity, the 100-year life, the ‘contagion’ of loneliness and the ‘problem’ of adult social care. We would like to counter both deficit and individualistic conceptualisations and the instrumental focus on meeting needs in much of this discourse and instead adopt an asset based and relational approach to considering questions about later life.

We will be holding an inaugural (virtual) meeting on 17 June 2021 and would like to invite you to attend to share your interests and to help us to build this new interdisciplinary community. We are interested in the broad areas listed below but are open to contributions on other themes related to Ageing Futures: 

• Pleasure, play and desire
• Creative ageing
• Digital technologies
• Diversity and inequality
• Age friendly communities and housing
• Intergenerational
• Death, dying and bereavement
• Care relationships and ethics

We envisage that we would develop further activity which could include (but would not be limited to):

• A seminar series to continue the conversation
• Interdisciplinary conference symposia or writing together
• Co-developing research bids

If you would like to attend could you please complete this online form by May 21^st, 2021.

Event organisers: Matthew Lariviere, Karen West, Paul Willis and Helen Manchester