Scientists, Scientific Associates, and Clinician Associates

Research Focus

My research program answers three interrelated questions: How do ideas and social responses shape what we know and understand about later life? To what extent do these correspond with older people’s experiences? How do disadvantage and inequality alter expectations and experiences of aging and late life? To answer the first question, I study the language used in international frameworks, cultural discourses on aging, and textual sources, such as policies or practices for older people. For example, older people are often given messages to “age in place” and to be “healthy or successful.” For the second, I interview older people from varying social locations to understand their experiences of aging and how these may correspond or conflict with the expectations and ideas in texts and popular frames. For example, are there particular life experiences that may alter whether they are deemed to achieve these gold standards, such as the challenges homelessness raises for “aging in place” or the idea that success is not possible alongside impairment or disability? I then consider how disadvantages can be carried across the life course and into late life, and I draw on older people’s insights to suggest changes to policy, practice and expectations.