THE AGEING OF BRITISH GERONTOLOGY LEARNING FROM THE PAST TO INFORM THE FUTURE | Page 55

J ohn M iles
Everyday Social Activist;
Community Development Worker
“Gerontology
has got
much more
particularised,
and an
emphasis on
the particular
means that
what we teach
people, as
gerontologists, is to always be
prepared for difference and
diversity at all times… And
it seems to me there’s been
two big common themes:
one is active ageing, which
was only in its infancy when
I started. That’s tangled up
Tom K irkwood
Professor Emeritus, Newcastle
University Institute for Ageing;
Professor of Biogerontology,
University of Copenhagen, Center
for Healthy Aging
“I became very interested in
the question, not
only how does
ageing play out at
the cellular and
molecular level
in the body, but
why does ageing
occur at all? And
that led to an idea
– which was the foundation
of a concept that’s known as
the disposable soma theory
of ageing – that has proved
to have a lot of mileage. It’s
G. Clare W enger
Emeritus Professor of Social
Gerontology, Bangor University
“Well, the biggest
thrill I ever had was
when I came up
with the [network]
typology on a small
sample, face-to-face
study. I identified
different types of
networks and it
turned out that there
were very few that
didn’t fit into one or other
type quite clearly. And so,
working with a statistician, we
with successful ageing and
rather more questionable
constructs of moral worth
and the responsibility
to maximise your
opportunities. The
other is anti-ageism.
I guess that’s where
I have drifted away
from the mainstream,
in that I don’t think
anti-ageism shows
any sign of being the
instrument to counter
material inequality. I’m not
even convinced that it’s
got an awful lot to do with
tackling the worst sorts of
social exclusion. I think both
those drivers have become…
are flawed.”
been quite good fun to see
how the concept – which
explains why we age – is
important, because it says that
the body is not programmed
to age and die… The body
ages because, as we live our
lives, we accumulate
faults in the cells
and tissues of
our body. That’s a
process which is
acted upon partly
by our genomes,
but also by our
life experiences,
and how we live
our lives within society. The
value of this is that it tells
us that ageing is much more
malleable than used to be
thought.”
worked out an algorithm so
that we could identify their
network types on the large
sample. Then we
ran network type
and crossed it
with everything:
all other
variables, and it
was significant
in about 95%
of cases. That
was a real thrill. I
couldn’t believe
it. I didn’t know where to put
myself.”
J im T raynor
Retired; former Civil Servant and
Social Worker, Leeds City Council
“At that time older
people were very
much marginalised
especially within
social services,
because social
services was a
so-called generic
service. Basically,
generic service meant childcare
first, everything else afterwards.
Fighting the corner of older
people was actually very hard.
Maybe that appealed to me as
Anthea T inker
Professor of Social
Gerontology, King’s College
London
“I’ve had very, very
few grants that haven’t
been multidisciplinary.
If I’m doing housing,
I always want to
have an architect,
an occupational therapist,
preferably an engineer. And so
a lot of my research has been
truly multidisciplinary… I like
B LE D DYN DAV I E S
Professorial Fellow, Oxford
Institute of Population
Ageing; Emeritus Professor
of Social Policy, LSE and
University of Kent
“Can I call myself a
gerontologist? No, there
are so many areas that I
haven’t got the faintest
about, and so I can’t really call
myself a gerontologist. I’d love
miriam bernard
Professor of Social Gerontology, Keele
University
“My academic
background…
with a mix of arts
and science, social
science, has been
a really important
driver. I have been
a social scientist
primarily, but I’ve
always had arts
interests and I’ve tried to bring
arts-related things into some
of the work, and some of the
writing, that we’ve done. W