Goodness this is an interesting thing to be asked to do; my own desert island discs. Where to start?

How did your interest in ageing begin, and why?

Well how did I come to be interested in ageing? This goes back quite a long way. At the end of my A levels in 1970, I was looking for a holiday job and I managed to find one as a Ward Orderly at Kingston General Hospital in Kingston upon Thames. I can honestly say that I have never worked so hard physically; I think I was on about 20 wards in two months, as I was ‘holiday’ relief. I know I spent some time in what was described as ‘geriatrics’, so this was a first experience of this kind of environment. But then, for the following three summers, I worked first, as a domestic, and then as a care assistant, in ‘Percy Gardens’ a residential care home in Malden Manor which was not too far from my own home. I did everything with the residents in that home. For two years the ‘Matron’ was an extreme disciplinarian and as a domestic I remember that she made me clean the white floor tiles of a black and white floor which seemed like an endless occupation. It was my first experience of institutional living and led me to want to examine living in residential care homes from the views of older people. I was to come back to these care settings in my PhD studies.

How did you become interested in the BSG

Of course, that’s something else that I need to explain. I was a geography student at University College Swansea during this time but my main interests were social geography and urban studies and I was always interested in community work. So when I was offered a University of Wales award to do a PhD, I asked if I could combine all these interests and consider the community lives of older people including those who lived in residential care homes. This was 1974-77 and not long after I started my supervisor said ‘well you had better get yourself off to Sociology, the Medical Sociology research unit and Anthropology and see how they can help you. So I found myself talking to Chris Harris and then Bill Bytheway surrounded by paper trying to explain to me the intricacies of some statistical analysis. Finally, Professor Tony Warnes was my external examiner - yes, gerontology was a small world and I expect at that time Tony might have been the only geographer to ask.

Anyway you can now see how I came to join the BSG - in 1978 I think, I have been around a long time.

Please can you briefly outline your career?

I decided to stay in research and my first job was to undertake a feasibility study developing quality of life measures for older people living in residential care homes. This was for the Personal Social Services Council where Malcolm Johnson was the lead. The study was done at the Survey Research Unit (SRU) at the Polytechnic of North London where I found an array of contract researchers. The senior staff at SRU had all worked at a similar outfit run by Mark Abrams at the then SSRC (pre-runner of ESRC) and I got to know Mark and other members of the Age Concern Research team well including David Hobman, Jonathan Barker and Sally Greengross. I was a founder member and Secretary of the Social Research Association during the early 1980s.

Of course as a contract researcher, the contract always came to an end and you went off to find something else. My next job took me to MIND (National Association for Mental Health) to work as their research officer with a special remit relating to services for older people with mental health problems. I was interviewed for that job by Tessa Jowell and Kina Avebury and developed further my interest in institutional care, housing with care, and community work. I can see that these were all aspects of environmental gerontology that I developed later. While I was at MIND, I saw an ad. in Community Care, I think, for an International Intern based at the International Federation in Ageing (IFA) in Washington D.C. I never thought I would get this but I applied, as you do sometimes. I did get this post and flew off to D.C. For someone who had not been out of the country too many times, it was a very daunting experience but the IFA staff are still life long friends.

The IFA was based in the offices of the American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) and I got used to the Washington policy round. I did some particular pieces of research including an international report on the ‘Status of Older Women’ which was delivered at the World Assembly on Ageing in Copenhagen in 1982. Unfortunately, I did not get to go and deliver the speech but I remember feeling very proud of this work. This brought me into an area of policy and issues around gender that led me to question many things. My other projects during that time were to do with Shared Housing and Mental Health. The shared housing project led me to write to Powell Lawton at the Philadelphia Geriatric Centre and to be invited to meet him and Maggie Kuhn who was living in Baltimore an intergenerational co-housing scheme at the time. Powell became a friend whose work was always innovative. It was a pleasure to have known him.

I won’t go on for too long. I came back from the USA and rejoined my colleagues at PNL to undertake the ‘National Consumer Study in Local Authority Residential Care Homes’ funded by the Department of Health. This was the coming together of Dianne Willcocks (Sociologist), Leonie Kellaher (Anthropologist) and myself and the start of CESSA (Centre for Environmental and Social Studies in Ageing). We worked on a wide range of projects throughout the 1980s everything from the ‘National Consumer Study of Quality of Life’ in Local Authority Residential Care Homes for the Department of Health to the first study of the regulation of care homes after the Registered Homes Act 1984 for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. We contributed to the Wagner review of Residential care and took part in the action research programme which followed called Caring in Homes. I think we made some headway not only in terms of research methodology but also in influencing practice. We were always trying to come up with some new way of disseminating findings and even invented a board game around practice called ‘A Residential Life’. I left PNL in 1990 and went to the OU where I have remained but Dianne, Leonie and I continued to write and collaborate on research and, at heart, I will always be an environmental gerontologist as more recent research has shown.

I joined the OU at a time when innovative packs on ageing had been developed by colleagues, such as Joanna Bornat, but they then wanted to develop a new course: An Ageing Society. So, I went as a researcher to develop skills in teaching through distance learning and also to use my research skills in management within what has now become a Faculty of Health & Social Care. When I joined we were a Department of Health, Social Welfare and Community Education with Malcolm Johnson as the Director and we have been an Institute and a School during this time. It has always been a busy position with good colleagues especially the members of the Centre for Ageing and Biographical Studies (CABS): Joanna Bornat, Julia Johnson, Bill Bytheway, Caroline Holland, Jeanne Katz, Rebecca Jones. You will see that throughout my career colleagues have reappeared. The Faculty no longer runs the Ageing Society course instead the gerontologists find themselves contributing to more generic teaching, especially our Level One Course: Understanding Health and Social Care which is currently being re-written, but over time has been studied by 50,000 students. I was promoted to Professor of Social Gerontology in 2005 and I am currently the Associate Dean (Research).

What do you find is your biggest challenge in your current post?

My biggest challenge at present is staff development for expert practitioners in social work and nursing who wish to develop their research skills. What I like best about this work is seeing the gradual development of a research culture within the Faculty, but what I like least is that I just don’t feel that I have time to write or do research myself. My most recent research has been the study of ‘Environment and Identity’ in the ESRC Growing Older programme, taking part with colleagues in the JRF Public Places Programme looking at intergenerational use of public space, and the Research on Age Discrimination (RoAD) project with Help the Aged funded by The Big Lottery. All of these projects have had an element of participatory research and I have an on-going interest in this area.

What do you like most about being a member of the BSG Executive Committee?

You will have noted earlier in this piece that I have been a member of the BSG for a long time – but I am not a founding member. I wanted to belong to a group who were multi-disciplinary, and I was a member of the BSG Executive in the 1980s, where I had a membership secretary role. I can remember developing the first Directory of Members by sitting on the floor in our flat surrounded by paper in piles. I was pleased to be re-elected to the Executive once again four years ago and as a member of the BSG Publications Group.

What do you want to achieve as a member of the BSG Publications Group?

I am keen to see how we can develop new ways of disseminating information. We have also just decided to organise the BSG Publications Award and the development of this is really exciting. You will hear more over coming months.

What was the first record that you ever bought?

The first record that I ever bought I think was ‘Telstar’ by the Tornadoes – this would have been in the ‘60s, or was it late 50s? This definitely predated all those Beatles records that my elder sister and I had.

What is your favourite film, and why?

Then you ask about films – now this is really difficult as I am a great film goer. I started out thinking about ‘Dr.Zhivago’ but then thought that I should come up to date a little and so I have chosen ‘The English Patient’ which I think is passionate, traumatic, well acted and beautiful to look at. Its one of those films I always watch again, and give time to, as it’s quite long.

What book are you reading at the moment?

As to books you find me reading ‘On Chesil Beach’ by Ian McEwan.

What is your favourite holiday destination, and why?

Favourite holiday destination – well this is difficult but I think I am going for Languedoc in France especially around Roquebrun – you can get to the sea from here and also stay in land and the weather’s pretty good and so is the wine.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

The best advice you’ve ever been given? Well I think this comes from my mum who still says ‘Always listen to people’ - it makes sense doesn’t it and is a guiding tool for research.

What three things would you take to a desert island with you, and why?

So to the desert islands section of my profile. Let me think ….. I think that I would say: Matches because I may not be very good at lighting a fire with sticks or stones; and a piano with music because I learnt to play once and this would give me space and time to get back to it and make some noise. My daughter is always saying to me – ‘we have a piano but no-one ever plays it’ … Oh well.