Delighted about the opportunity to present at the International Conference of Three Societies on Literature and Science at Birmingham, contributing to the panel on ‘Facing Mortality’ with reflections on anti-ageing discourse at the boundaries between predictive popular science and creative science fiction.
Category Archives: Health Sciences
Foundation Future Leaders 2024
Delighted to have been accepted on the Foundation Future Leaders programme 2024 organised by the Foundation of Science and Technology. The programme brings together a cohort of around 30 mid-career professionals, with ten representatives each from the research community, industry and the public sector, including the civil service.
Keynote at GSA Ireland
In December 2023, I was invited to deliver the opening keynote at the annual conference of the German Studies Association of Ireland, which focused on the Medical Humanities this year. My talk explored the nexus between the culturally and medically prized concept of narrative and a culturally prevalent account of ageing as decline and loss.
SAACY at Age UK
Delighted to have been invited to speak at the Age UK Influencing Division Briefing about the Policy Report, Shifting How We View the Ageing Process, which summarises the Themes for Actions and Next Steps explored during a Policy Lab held in the framework of my research programme on The Sciences of Ageing and the Culture of Youth, funded by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.
SAACY at Centre for Ageing Better
Delighted to have been invited to speak at Ageing Better Headquarters about our Policy Report, Shifting How We View the Ageing Process. The Report summarises findings from the one-day workshop that explored the value, feasibility and acceptability of shifting how we view the ageing process. The Report’s goal is to achieve attitudinal change to ageing, by moving away from a narrative of disease and decline towards the idea that ageing is a lifelong process of change.
Shifting How We View the Ageing Process
As part of The Sciences of Ageing and the Culture of Youth, we had run a Policy Lab together with the Policy Institute at King’s in Autumn 2022. The one-day workshop had brought together academic researchers from a range of disciplines, practicing clinicians, people with lived experience and representatives from the care sector, charities and the policy world to explore how valuable, feasible and acceptable it would be to shift how we view the ageing process. Read the full Policy Report here.
Grappling with the biological reality of ageing
In June 2023, I delivered an invited seminar in the School of Lifecourse and Population Health Sciences at King’s. Lively discussion about the barriers to accepting material changes of the body that come with ageing.
Older Adults’ Perspectives, Experiences and Expectations of Ageing in England
Here’s the grounded theory study protocol of the ongoing sociological investigation that is part of the SAACY research programme. Our study invites adults aged 50-80 years old with different backgrounds and experiences to take part in interviews and focus groups to explore and discuss what ageing means to them. ‘Older adults’ perspectives, experiences, and expectations of ageing in England: A grounded theory study protocol’ is published in the open access journal Social Science Protocols, hosted by Edinburgh Diamond.
Martina Zimmermann 