Symposium: The social aging
Society and economy
Symposium with Professor Merril Silverstein, Professor Kieran Walsh and Professor Sigurveig H. Sigurðardóttir.
Seminar
Symposium with Professor Merril Silverstein, Professor Kieran Walsh and Professor Sigurveig H. Sigurðardóttir.
Every fifth person in Sweden will be 60 years or over in ten years. The older population is a remarkably heterogeneous group compared with younger age groups. One aspect of the heterogeneity of the older population concerns the diversity in life chances of older people in terms of exposure to risk and opportunity throughout the life course. Social ageing highlights the significance of social relations; that may buffer the different risks throughout the life course. This symposium will highlight the significance of intergenerational transfers, social exclusion and critical life transitions in later life. Professor Merril Silverstein (Professor in Sociology and Social work) will lecture about the reciprocity between generations in the Aging family. This will also be the theme of Sigurveig H. Sigurðardóttir (Professor in Social Work ), who will talk about social relations in a changing society- grandparents and grandchildren. Last of all, Kieran Walsh (Professor in Public Policy) will hold a presentation about Social exclusion and critical life transitions in later life.
The symposium is organised around the following themes
Merril Silverstein, Professor, Sociology and Human Development and Family Science. Syracuse University US
Merril Silverstein is inaugural holder of the Marjorie Cantor Chair in Aging Studies at Syracuse University in the Maxwell School Department of Sociology and in Human Development and Family Science. He received his doctorate in sociology from Columbia University. In over 150 research publications, he has focused on aging in the context of family life, with an emphasis on life course and international perspectives. He serves as principal investigator of the Longitudinal Study of Generations and has had projects in China, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Israel. He is a Brookdale Fellow and Fulbright Senior Scholar and between 2010-2014 served as editor-in-chief of Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences.
Kieran Walsh, Professor of Ageing and Public Policy (Economics), Former Chair, ROSEnet COST Action CA15122, Director Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, Institute for Lifecourse and Society, NUI, Galway
Kieran Walsh is Acting Director of the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, and Project Director of Project Lifecourse at the Institute for Lifecourse and Society in the National University of Ireland Galway.
Kieran has extensive experience in interdisciplinary social gerontology and life-course research. He has played a leading role in the development of mixed-method approaches for national and cross-national projects, and has led an international multi-site and interdisciplinary research programmes.
Kieran’s research interests and expertise focus on: social exclusion in later life; the relative nature of disadvantage in cross-national contexts; place and life-course transitions and trajectories; the influence of the institutional life course; and informal and formal infrastructures of care. Kieran is also Chair of the European COST Action CA15122 on ‘Reducing Old-Age Social Exclusion’ (ROSEnet), which has over 120 members from 37 different countries.
Sigurveig H. Sigurðardóttir, Professor at the Faculty of Social Work, University of Iceland
Sigurveig H. Sigurðardóttir graduated as a social worker from the University of Gothenburg and worked at the Geriatric department of the University Hospital in Iceland for several years. She received her doctorate in gerontology from the Institute of Gerontology, Jönköping University.
Her main research field is care of older people, both formal and informal care. She has also studied family relations and support between generations.
She has participated in different Nordic and European networks related to older adults and has published several research articles and book chapters.
Sigurveig Sigurðardóttir is the coordinator of the Nordic Master’s programme in Gerontology (NordMaG), which is a cooperation between four Nordic Universities in offering a joint degree in Gerontology. She is the former Head of the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Iceland.