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Can a machine error foster intergenerational connectivity?
At 106 years old and despite having already gone through primary school–as well as a career as a teacher and fifty years of retirement – Ingrid Sandberg got an official l...
Universal Health Coverage – how meaningful for older people?
Once a relatively marginal issue in the global health debate, in recent years the momentum towards support for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) has grown apace, as national governments and internati...
Can ‘Leave No One Behind’ be achieved for older people in the SDGs?
One of the most transformative and far reaching aspects of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the pledge to Leave No One Behind (LNOB). Simply put, this is the idea that the SDGs will not ...
Building Public Awareness of the (New) Old Age: A Curriculum
Middle age is having a rebirth. Rather than conceptualizing this phase of life as something to survive, a new vision is taking hold, one that views midlife as a time of renewal and opportunity.&nbs...
Age(ing) and Afrofuturism
I am currently involved in a proposed project on Age(ing) at the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt, Germany to open in October 2018 for 11 months. ‘Age(ing)’ will be explored in all its ...
Bridging the digital divide amongst older adults
Innovations in modern technology have revolutionized healthcare as we know it. Unprecedented advances in the mechanisms used to capture and analyse data have increased the capacity to predict and m...
Transition to retirement. Does it really matter for our health and well-being?
For many people retirement is seen as a key reward for decades of busy working life. It is a time of freedom, a time to relax, to explore and to have fun unburdened by the daily grind. For others, ...
Mens Sana in Corpore Sano? Beauty and body performance in Science
A few weeks ago I had an interesting conversation with a friend. He is a disability-rights activist and was very upset by how the Italian media had decided to cover the news of Prof Stephen H...
Atul Gawande's Being Mortal: An OIPA Book Club
If, like me, you are a veteran of several book clubs, you will know two things: 1. The best books to discuss are the ones that provoke heated disagreement and 2. The best book groups are the ...
Older people still left behind
I am looking forward to the forthcoming seminar series on “SDGs, Ageing and Global Development” at the Institute. It promises to raise and discuss many issues that I find important. The...
Three reasons why we need narratives about suffering in old age
There is a collective aversion when it comes to facing the realities of old age, or so John Harris argued in The Guardian last February. Harris is, of course, not the first to point at a widespread...
Don’t mind the gap
The gender pay gap is not a good measure of gender discrimination. The attention it is being given is disproportionate and misleading. If it leads to companies gaming it, its effects could be extre...
Are we waking up to ageing?
My own research interests in population ageing began when I was Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. As one of the first (if not the first) governments in the world, the ...
Ageing and the elderly in Russia: birth cohorts, production processes, and generations
In January and February 2018 I made research visits to Moscow to carry out work related to the Research Laboratory on the Economics of Health and Health Reform at the Russian Presidential Academy o...
21st Century Skills for Older Workers
In an era where people in the West are living longer and healthier lives, older workers not only can - but often choose - to remain in the workforce longer or return to work post-retirement. ...