News & Events

The Centre for Ageing and Inequalities are pleased to announce a series of online seminars for 2023

Friday 3rd November 12noon-1pm

Bruce Davenport presents "Cessation of volunteering in cultural heritage organisations due to age-related health conditions: personal impact and management challenge"

Friday 17th November 12noon-1pm

Emma Longmuir presents "Mothers, daughters and their daughters too...Rethinking female ageing and motherhood in Annie Lennox's lockdown videos"

Andy Clark presents "Ageing in deindustrialising communities: the role of historic socio-economic rupture in later life"

Friday 1st December 12noon-1pm

Jacob Jewusiak presents "Growing older and heating up: Climate change and the science fiction of ageing"

Friday 15th December 12noon-1pm

Vanessa Davey presents "Exploring the feasibility of developing a minimum dataset for homecare"

Seminars for 2024

Friday 26th January 12noon

Tash Fothergill-Misbah "Shaking hands with the devil" - Film

Friday 9th February 12noon

Andrew Newman "Care" - Film

Friday 23rd February 12noon

Kelly Brotherhood "Analysis of routinely collected social care data to support local authorities with long-term care planning"

Friday 1st March 12noon

talk "Language and cognition in age-related hearing loss"

Margreet is a Lecturer in Psychology at Newcastle University. She is interested in age-related hearling loss and how this influences both cognitive abilities and language abilities. In her talk she presented a series of experimental studies investigating complex speech processing in hearing loss using behavioural and fMRI measures. Anyone interested in collaborating or looking for more information can contact her on margreet.vogelzang@newcastle.ac.uk.

Centre for Ageing and Inequalities Event - 14th February 2024

One of our long-term aims is to develop a funded centre that is distinctive because of its multi-disciplinary focus on ageing and inequalities, bringing together researchers from the social and medical sciences alongside the arts and humanities.

But what does inequality have to do with ageing, and how can we work together to make this an even greater focus of our research and activites?

These questions were explored through presentations and group discussions at the event.

Introduction Slide - Tom Scharf

British Society of Gerontology Conference 2024

Newcastle University has been successful in applying to host the British Society of Gerontology Annual Conference in 2014. The event will take place from the 3rd to the 5th July 2024.

The British Society of Gerontology is the leading academic and professional organisation representing gerontologists in the UK. The Society's annual conference typically attracts around 400 delegates from around the world, made up of academics and practitioners interested in a wide range of issues related to ageing.

Newcastle University has a longstanding commitment to interdisciplinary research on ageing. The conference will be organised by the Centre for Ageing and Inequalities, which brings together gerontologists from across the University working in the social and health sciences, digital technologies, and the arts and humanities.

The conference will be held in the Newcastle Helix, a global centre for urban innovation in the heart of the city that brings together academia, the public sector, communities, and business. Much of the conference will be housed in a dedicated conference facility, the Frederick Douglass Centre.

David Lain, who is one of the organisers of the conference, said: 'We are delighted to be given the opportunity to host the British Society of Gerontology Conference in 2024. We look forward to welcoming delegates for what will be an exciting programme of conference activities'.

For further information please contact Dr David Lain (david.lain@newcastle.ac.uk)

Cultures of Ageing and Care

A new book series is inviting proposals for exciting book projects that explore questions of ageing and care across disciplines and cultures. Co-edited by Shirley Jordan (Newcastle University), Norah Keating (University of Alberta, Canada; Stirling University; North-West University, South Africa) and Siobhan McIlvanney (King's College London) and published by De Gruyter, the book series seeks to address a wide range of issues concerning ageing and care, exploring these in a variety of genres and forms, and from diverse cultural and disciplinary standpoints).

Read about the series here

Culture of Ageing and Care

Older Workers in Transition

The Centre for Ageing and Inequalities at Newcastle University was delighted to host the online book launch for 'Older Workers in Transition: European Experiences in a Neoliberal Era'. It was held on 3rd November 2022, and it celebrated the recent publication of this new edited volume from Bristol University Press.

Book editor David Lain from Newcastle University welcomed participants. Co-editor Sarah Vickerstaff then explained the background to the publication. The book explores older workers' experiences of different types of transitions, including redeployment within the firm, temporary employment, and attempts to leave unemployment. It was argued that such transitions are increasingly important in the context of pressures to extend working lives in Europe and elsewhere.

Chris Phillipson discussed how job transitions in older age have been influenced historically by different pressures. He plotted the development of retirement in the 1950s and 1960s, and the move towards extended working lives since the 1990s. This move to extended working lives, it was argued, coincided with the rise of more precarious forms of employment. Chris Phillipson suggested that these changes were often presented as offering people more choice, but in reality they resulted in greater degrees of risk.

Following on from this, David Lain gave an overview of the book, focusing on the empirical chapters. These were written by leading scholars, who drew on the qualitative research to explore the lived experiences of older workers. It was argued that see a consistent influence of 'neoliberal responsibilisation' across the diverse range of countries covered. This a political trend shifts responsibility onto the older person to choose to take whatever job opportunities are available to them, while providing limited support to help them make such transitions.

Aine Ni Leime gave the final presentation, discussing her chapter on older care workers and teachers in Ireland. It was argued that care workers in her research expected to work significantly longer than teachers, due to the financial consequences of low-paid work over the life course. This highlights inequalities that are likely to occur as a result of extended working lives.

Older Workers in Transition if the first book in 'Rethinking Work and Retirement' book series. Co-editor Mariska van der Horst closed the session by discussing forthcoming books from the series, and opportunities to write for it.

You can see a recording of the event here.