Introduction

Throughout the centuries old age and ageing have been ever present, but of low status. Education and research in ageing has not been high priority in terms of research funding or policy until relatively recently. As James Birren states ‘gerontology is an ancient subject but a recent science’ The changing demographics of ageing have raised issues for policy and practice, as well as creating new and increasing markets for business and commerce. Consequently, the need for an evidence base for policy decisions, best practice or scoping the market has led to increased interest in research in ageing. New research questions are being asked, new theories in ageing are developing and new researchers are crossing disciplinary boundaries bringing with them novel approaches to studying ageing. Gerontological research, across all landscapes (social, economic, and physical) has consequently entered a new ERA in the UK. The Chief Executive of the UK Medical Research Council, Les Borysiewicz, in a speech in 2007 stated that there are three great challenges facing the world today - climate change; the provision of clean water and an ageing population and, until now, we have not taken ageing seriously enough. Whereas climate change may take a while to have significant impact, ageing is having considerable impact across the globe without exception. As this statement implies the status of ageing is changing; this is a new era with gerontology increasingly a priority in policy, practice, and research agendas

A new ERA dawns?

An era is defined in the Collins English dictionary as a ’period of time considered as being of distinctive character; an epoch,’ with distinctive being a key word. It is an extended period of time, the years of which are numbered from a fixed point or event.

What is distinctive about ageing in the 21 st century? Are there different eras in ageing research? What marks this out as a new era? What defines us moving into a distinctive and new period of time? What is this distinctive landscape or territory of the gerontologist?

The increasing status of gerontological research is one distinctive characteristic of a new era but there are three key areas which distinguish change in gerontology to the extent that we could call this the beginning of a new era:

• New research questions
• A theoretical and methodological shift
• Widening boundaries of gerontology

Within each of these three developing areas, there are opportunities for emerging researchers in ageing to shape the research landscapes – in terms of content, methodologies, networking and through the interface with policy, practice, education and industry. To illustrate these three areas (new questions; theory and methods and widening boundaries of gerontology), we look at three distinct ERA’s: Emerging Research on Ageing; Environmental Research on Ageing and on Emerging Researchers in Ageing.

Emerging research on ageing

New questions on ageing: We can view an era in gerontological research by the different government funding streams for research and the different questions that are addressed in each programme that has been funded through our research councils.

In the early 1980s a UK programme of research on ageing called ‘The Ageing Initiative’ was chaired by Margot Jefferys. This was followed by the ‘Growing Older’ programme, established in the late 1990s and directed by Professor Alan Walker, which looked at issues such as quality of life and social exclusion. Currently the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) programme again chaired by Alan Walker is in progress. This £22m 7-year (2005-2012) multidisciplinary research collaboration is to both investigate the new dynamics of ageing and the various influences shaping them; and to show how their consequences can be managed to achieve the maximum benefits for older people and society. As such it includes a range of novel research areas, emphasises multi-disciplinarity and focuses upon the policy practice interface and user engagement.

The major research funders also recognise the importance of a collective response, taking the initiative to tackle some of the major problems such as dementia and the ageing brain. The UK Age Research Forum, (UKARF) is a strategic partnership between government, research councils and charities and is currently undertaking a portfolio analysis of what research councils and government bodies fund in relation to ageing research and is collectively developing a strategic position on future priorities for funding. Building on the NDA model they are launching the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing initiative again based on this collaborative multidisciplinary framework and international collaboration. A further landmark of a new era here is also the acceptance of a lifecourse approach to ageing- again broadening the scope of ageing research to look at how earlier experiences have impacted later life.

New theoretical challenges: these flow from the changing content and context of ageing research. Vern Bengston and his colleagues in an article in the Gerontologist in 1997 looked at the different stages of theoretical ‘advancement’ in gerontology. The first phase/ era included theories such as the disengagement theory; the second phase the political economy and the third phase the lifecourse models, feminist theories of ageing; critical gerontology etc. we could add to this postmodernism and humanist gerontology. The emphasis has changed, however, from theories of ageing to theories in ageing, taking a more holistic and cross-disciplinary view.

Shifting boundaries: this is most evident through engaging different research users in ageing with disciplinary boundaries widening to encompass engineers, technologists, even glaciologists as well as practitioners from diverse professions. Research on climate change and its impact on vulnerable older people for example have brought diverse participants in the research endeavour together.

Multi-disciplinarity is crucial to understanding the holistic picture of ageing and such recognition has led to a broader focus in gerontology. Alan Walker (2008) has argued that no single discipline can produce the research to confront the major social issues as a result of demographic change or develop a portfolio of products, services and practices to meet the needs of an ageing population. To rival the massive resources devoted to ageing research by the National Institute for Aging in the US, Europe needs to combine disciplines. A new science of multi-disciplinarily is emerging and needs to be recognised. This is a key distinguishing mark of a new era. However as Alan Walker again comments multidisciplinarity shouldn’t be top down and imposed but must start from the research question to be answered.

Increasingly there are divergent research users or stakeholders as Warnes and Phillips (2007) observe. Gerontology encompasses the study of older people and biological ageing. That immediately points to two different paradigms with different stakeholders in the process of bidding for funding, lobbying the ageing agenda in a highly competitive environment for funding that involves older people, with contractual claims on younger age groups; the government with massive responsibilities for funding old age income, health social care and thirdly professional interests and groups servicing older people.

The policy - practice - research collaboration and interface is yet to be developed to the full, but we must demonstrate the impact of our work is evident in such circles if resources in the long term are to be justified. There is also a case for basing the argument for a new era on the inclusion of practice wisdom in research. An integrated approach, looking at whole lives, not academic specialisation, should be and is increasingly the goal. This requires ‘joined up thinking’ in applying research between health professionals, social scientists, architects and planners and accepting differing interpretations of research from each perspective. Dissemination and implementation of research into practice settings remains a major challenge for the new era but one which is progressing as practitioners in the professions move into the gerontological arena as researchers and students.

Internationalisation of research has also marked this as a new era. In relation to policy and practice global stakeholders (the World Bank and the World Health Organisation) have become major consumers of ageing research findings. The landscape has become much more international with cross regional and continent collaborations such as the European Research Area in Ageing ERA-AGE and the UK-Canada link through the New Dynamics of Ageing programme. Yet the political scene is also shifting with UK’s devolved governments. Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland are bigger players in setting the scene of ageing funding than previously, with Wales, for example, funding a unique research and development network on ageing. Reflecting on the Welsh situation one advantage is the increasing importance of small size in being able to work with government and develop policy research forum links with the older peoples commissioner and deputy minister. How we marry agendas from local to national and international level is a challenge.

Perhaps the greatest change in the last decade in the UK has been the inclusion of older people in the research process. A component of a knowledge based approach should draw on older people’s perspectives and experiences; these are obviously diverse as people age with different lifestyles and expectations. As Richard Setterstein (1999) urges: ‘The time has come to return real people- with real lives and real voices - to our research’. We too often reduce the voices of our respondents to numbers and lose their lives in our computers. User knowledge has tended to be undervalued, yet users possess vital knowledge and have first hand reflections on ‘what works.’ Participative approaches are fundamental to increasing pieces of research and for example in the NDA programme, older people are at the heart of the programme development and decision making in relation to projects that are funded as well as advice to the programme as a whole and individual projects.

Business and industry are becoming big drivers of an ageing ‘knowledge economy’. Companies are using research (social science as well as medical research) in looking for new innovative products and areas in which to invest to provide creative solutions for an expanding market of older consumers. Multidisciplinary work also refers to the cross over of services, products and ideas between public and private sectors (one can identify the need the other develop the technology) and not just knowledge of processes and experiences being shared across disciplines. Knowledge translation into policy, practice and product and services is increasing. There is an increasing need to trace and map the impact of such translation to enable researchers to demonstrate their value.

Environmental Research on Ageing

A new era for research on ageing can be said to be characterised by new themes/ issues/landscapes in what broadly can be captured under environmental aspects of ageing:

New themes and disciplines: Themes and research questions covered in conferences such as the Australian Association of Gerontology and the British Society of Gerontology annual conferences demonstrate a broader perspective on environmental issues, beyond the physical environment, to incorporate the perceptual, emotional and social landscapes of ageing. This is a relatively new area of research in the UK but in a short space of time has had major impact on government policy around social exclusion for example. Some examples here include:-:

• Perceptions of space and place which can have an impact on quality of life for older people. People may have particular fears about parts of their environment; some may feel excluded and for others spaces and places may hold significant memories and histories. Tom Scharf illustrates this in work on social exclusion and inclusion in deprived areas of the UK.


• Identity and space. The late Glenda Laws stressed a clear link between the built environment, representations of lifestyle, stages in the life course and construction of aged identities. She argued that identities are spatialised and we hold stereotypes based on geography - ‘where we are says a lot about who we are’. Age segregation of retirement communities for example says something about our lifestyles of consumption.


• Rural ageing: Although the dichotomy between urban and rural landscapes still attracts research, gerontologists are focusing on more diverse agendas in terms of rural research areas - the sustainability of agriculture; the impact of financial crises on rurality and the movement toward more eco-friendly environments.


• Whose space has increasingly become an important question. Older people have been ignored in past debates on space but in recent years there has been growing recognition in the UK of the gendered and ethnic nature of space within urban areas. The diversity of the ageing experience in different places again opens the opportunity for us to take a multi-disciplinary approach. Caroline Holland’s work on older people’s use of public space highlights the contested nature of space and importance of place to different groups.


• Connectivity and citizenship is an increasing subject area. As Chris Phillipson has argued cities themselves are undergoing rapid change, through the process of globalization, which is promoting some cities while creating problems for others. Paradoxically, globalisation produces huge movements of people, but with increasing numbers of older people maintaining a strong sense of attachment to particular places. Glocalisation of ageing is taking place - on the one hand globalisation, on the other, people are attached to locality and neighbourhood – the local. How people connect is becoming of increasing significance. With increasing globalisation and migration, issues of support to older people come into focus. Thus, proximity, distance and transport become particularly significant when care needs arise.


• On a global level, climate change, mitigation and the impact on vulnerable older people is an area of development with gerontologists in the forefront. The UK has at least one group consisting of a polar scientist, gerontologists, lawyers and technologists in developing the research agenda in this area.


• ‘Ageing in place’ is a continuing thread in environmental research and is being challenged as a policy driver for supporting older people to ‘stay put’. The impact of change within an area can have significant effects on people who ‘age in place’, as change can present significant risk for older people and service delivery as facilities exit certain neighbourhoods. How older people manage such change is increasingly a focus for gerontology. Are environments sustainable in supporting older people to age in place is a question being researched by Miriam Bernard and her colleagues.


• Designing places and spaces within urban areas will be of increasing importance in an agenda of inclusion, which doesn’t leave older people feeling trapped and vulnerable. A focus on the research of living arrangements of older people to date, has concentrated on design, architecture and structure of individual buildings along with residential segregation. Increasing research focusing on technology and design for ageing can be found in projects for example, on digital living or navigational aids for older people where spatial planners and lifestyle designers are working together

Traditionally there has been little theoretical development and inter- or multi-disciplinary collaboration in this area of investigation. In recent years there has been disappointment among academics about the lack of theory in environmental gerontology. The literature has narrowly concentrated on adaptation of the individual to their environment with the ecological theory of aging as developed by Powell Lawton as the major influence in thinking. In an article in the 2003 November issue of The Gerontologist, Stephen Golant argued that 'past theoretical efforts have failed to incorporate time adequately’ and that being sensitive to time and behaviour will open new avenues in theoretical debate - looking at the salience of past environmental experiences and future environmental expectations. Theoretical development however is developing through a critical human ecology perspective and a critical rural gerontology for example which incorporates both space and time.

There has been comparatively little cross over between spatial planners, gerontologists, architects, technologists, sociologists. However a greater spatial perspective in gerontology is emerging where we are extending our gerontological imagination beyond existing boundaries and thinking about linkages across disciplines, such as geography, land use planning, architecture, health and social care. On such project looking at older people's use of unfamiliar space maps out the spatial awareness of older people, their perception of area and will work toward developing a tool for spatial planners and a handheld tool for older people based on GPS/GIS.

This also means we must take a more careful look at older people’s lives as they are lived across time and in a spatial context, hence more qualitative, biographical and geographical approaches. These stories are important to individuals, but they also tell us a great deal about social change. Developing new methods of recording and interpreting the different ways people, particularly those from ethnic minority groups, speak about community life and change will be a significant task for gerontology in the decade to come.

Emerging Researchers in Ageing; shaping the research landscape

A new era is reflected in the different opportunities for emerging researchers in relation to:

• The greater volume of research funding


• A growing number of research centres specialising in aspects of ageing. Concentration of centres in the UK, where distinctive areas of research are being attached to particular centres provides early researchers with opportunities to develop a portfolio of research as part of a team

These factors are accompanied by

• The entry of researchers with diverse professional and academic backgrounds
• The global ageing agenda and internationalisation of research in ageing also affords greater networking opportunities for early career researchers. Ageing as a global experience enables transferable skills
• In many ways it can be said that early career researchers are in the right place at the right time. Ageing is taking on a new and important status in policy and practice with government strategies on ageing in all four countries of the UK.

There are also challenges on the research community to support early career or emerging researchers in ageing:

• There is a need to build the research capacity in ageing; to have continued mentoring and support as well as enthusiasm among the ageing fraternity which is crucial in attracting people to the field or encouraging others to discipline hop. In the UK as elsewhere in Europe gerontology has ageing researchers who are coming up to retirement age – are we replacing such researchers with the next generation? We need to be engaged in a similar exercise to Helen Bartlett and colleagues here in Australia looking at what motivates people to come into ageing and how they can be supported; what aspirations post doctoral students have about the future and to review the challenges to emerging researchers in terms of their career pathways..
• Challenge as no undergraduate provision in the UK to provide the next generation of gerontologists
• The pursuit of funding for multi-disciplinary work poses significant barriers to the fostering of innovative cross disciplinary research. This is particularly acute given funding and career advancement is mainly concentrated within disciplines, together with the low scientific status of multidisciplinary research. In the UK the Research assessment exercise has detracted from such an approach with money going to those who are producing international research within a particular discipline. Gerontology is not seen as such a discipline in its own right and comes under social work/ social policy or medicine or subjects allied to health.
• Multi-disciplinarity around research themes also provides a challenge to turn the diversity of research into a coherent and accumulating body of useful knowledge.
• Supporting practice researchers- the translation of research into practice by those who are practitioners is invaluable. This can also apply to industry and business as much as the public sector. Agendas in the business world may be different and an appreciation of research is crucial to support such researchers in ageing. Knowledge translation is key to our future in ageing and our researchers should be proficient at this. Dissemination is one thing – implementation another and this needs to be part of the research process, challenging researchers to work along side those who will be implementing the research.
• Remaining independent in the market where companies want to ‘own ageing’ and where sustainability from such funding sources is crucial.

Finally, how should learned societies such as the BSG and AAG respond to the new era? Is there a role for such learned societies? How do we internationalise the societies with limited resources?

Some challenges for us include:

• Identity- what are we about? Are we fit for the 21 st century and this new era of research – what do researchers want from such societies? How do we reflect a multidisciplinary and diverse community of researchers?


• Impact assessment- how is policy, practice, industry using our research? Do we know? We must concentrate on our outcomes more than we have done.


• What will the future be in this new era? What will it look like for learned societies in 2020 and beyond? What will people value? How will this impact on our research and teaching?

There are a number of key areas of work for both societies.

Engaging emerging researchers in international networks to encourage multi- and inter - disciplinarity is one area of activity. This can be broadened to a global scale through the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics. Such bodies can providing safe environments as a platform for major presentations of research or promote reciprocal exchanges at conferences as well as the development of collaborations on research proposals of mutual interest. In the UK we have access to EU funding for research on ageing and here the FLARE initiative of engaging new researchers from across Europe is a good example. FLARE- standing for Future Leaders in Ageing Research in Europe was launched in 2007 and is a joint programme to provide 16 3 year post doctoral students resources to spend time in another country working on a multidisciplinary piece of work and with end users.

Developing network links with funding for PhD students through BSG and AAG to spend time in each others gerontology centres would be a development I would like to explore.

Mentoring needs to be explored as members can offer a wider service than at present.

Each society also needs to put pressure on our respective research councils to link programmes of research with specific funding to build research capacity as outlined earlier across disciplines and cross nationally. There is also a responsibility on us to engage society in ageing research and to close the gap between science and society. Important to be able to translate our research into jargon free language, understandable and to make the study of ageing exciting.

Conclusion

Gerontological research can be described as emerging in a new era defined by new research topics of fundamental importance, new researchers entering multidisciplinary fields to a greater extent than before, providing new ways of working and different theoretical and methodological approaches. Our respective learned societies have a responsibility to respond to this new era. We need to be transformational, creative and visionary in shaping the research landscape; with increasing funding for ageing research the time is right with opportunities to be innovative and imaginative.

Note: this is an edited version of Judith’s keynote address at the November 2008 meeting at the Australian Association of Gerontology

References

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