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Eileen Fairhurst Professor in Public Health , Salford University ( until December 31st 2016 ) & Chairman of East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust “ I ’ m not sure I do think of myself as a gerontologist … I define myself , I think , by my initial discipline , sociology . I ’ m a sociologist who studies ageing .”
Paul Higgs Professor of Sociology of Ageing , University College London
“ If you look at our work , we use different conceptual starting points : the third age is very much about generational habitus and about the dispositions of people growing into older people who have lived through the transformations of the ‘ 60s and
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Alison Norman Retired , former Deputy Director , Centre for Policy on Ageing
“ CPA had given up grant giving and were beginning to look for policy thinking . The first job that I was given , in fact as soon as I ’ d settled in and looked through a bit of the history and found my feet , was to write a book on transport and the elderly which is what I cut my teeth on . That was my
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“ I ’ m nearer the end of my life than the beginning , but do I want to think about it ? I don ’ t know . Sometimes I do , sometimes I don ’ t … I suppose my philosophy is , you can ’ t wait , you can ’ t sit around waiting for things to happen . Just get on and do .”
‘ 70s and ‘ 80s ; whereas the fourth age is seen very much more , almost historically , located in our fear of old age .”
“ The 20th century was about people living long lives ; the 21st century is about what is going to happen in later life , and how that diversity is going to transform many of the assumptions that we have about old age .”
first book . But this rights and risks concept – because of my previous history [ as a psychiatric social worker ] – was very much in my mind at the time , and when I had a free rein on what I wanted to do next , that ’ s what I did . It was clear that the whole field was moving very , very fast : BSG was being born ; Ageing and Society was being born ; and the whole psychogeriatric field was very much being born . It was a very exciting time . It was just one thing after another .”
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PETER COLEMAN Emeritus Professor of Psychogerontology , University of Southampton
“ They were happy for me to change my title to Professor of Psychogerontology . The title is interesting … it ’ s a title that we used in the Netherlands . The alternative is geropsychologist . The difference between the two is
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Sarah Harper Professor of Gerontology , University of Oxford and Director , the Royal Institution
“ We will live in a Britain soon , and a Europe soon , where we have over half our population aged over 50 and therefore , our world will change . I would like to think that people would really understand what ageing is about : that business
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John Vincent Retired ; former Associate Professor of Sociology and Honorary Research Fellow , University of Exeter
“ Over and above the basic intellectual curiosity trying to understand something that ’ s not well understood , it was basically a political motivation … and seeing old age
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that for a psychogerontologist the gerontology comes first ; whereas for a geropsychologist the psychology is preeminent . So that ’ s why I took that title . It hasn ’ t really caught on in Britain . I think I ’ m still the only person who uses that title , and I ’ ve used it more to stand up for what I believe in which is a developmental psychology of ageing .”
would understand it , that policy makers would understand it , and communities would understand it , and it wouldn ’ t be this major taboo that we ’ re having an ageing population . Because not only will we have all these people over 50 , we ’ re going to have increasing numbers of people over 80 , or even over 90 , or even over 100 , and we have to have a society where it ’ s perfectly normal and acceptable .”
as a particularly pernicious form of inequality . In order to change that you need to understand it .”
“ I ’ ve had the opportunity since I retired to do all sorts of things . I just left academic life behind and I ’ ve been following my passions for all sorts of things including self-sufficiency : with an allotment , a wood , being a bee keeper and all sorts of things .”
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Sally Greengross Crossbench Peer ; Chief Executive , the International Longevity Centre- UK ; and Co-President , ILC Global Alliance
“ I don ’ t think anybody takes in the real demographic change because the numbers are quite amazing . The whole of society has got to adapt to the fact that it ’ s children who will be scarce and older people will be the mainstream . I don ’ t know
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whether it ’ ll be irrelevant , but it ’ s got to be viewed differently .”
“ Gerontologists have still got a huge job to do to make sure that age becomes more irrelevant . You could say it ’ s the end of gerontology , it ’ s just society . But if gerontology transforms itself into integrating age and making age less of a feature , then it ’ s a very good job that gerontologists will do .”
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MARGARET BONEHAM Semi-retired ; former Dean of Faculty of Social Sciences , University of Bolton
“ I got interested in ethnicity and was employed as a community support worker for a year , helping to set up a centre for elderly Asian Sikh ladies . And my PhD was action research setting up this day centre and looking at the relationship between them and social services and what
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help they were getting from their friends , from their family and from the wider community . I learnt Punjabi and that day centre which I helped to set up is still there 30 years later . As a result of that I cowrote a book with Ken Blakemore called Age , Race and Ethnicity , which won Age Concern Book of the Year in 1994 .” |