Research
You will find a complete range of our peer-reviewed monographs, multi-authored and edited works, including original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
You are looking at 1 - 10 of 86 items for :
- Type: Book x
- Ageing and Gerontology x
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Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Older adults’ civic engagement has become a key concern in academic and policy debates in recent years. However, existing studies on this topic remain fragmented across various conceptual and methodological approaches.
This book provides a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and multidimensional perspective on older adults’ civic engagement. It proposes a conceptual framework which understands civic engagement as a multidimensional concept encompassing a diversity of activities through which older adults contribute to their communities and wider society. Contributors explore the factors shaping older adults’ participation in various civic activities across the life course, considering their diversity in terms of social locations such as gender, health status, migrant background, socioeconomic background and residential arrangements.
By analysing past and current research, policy and practice, the book offers recommendations for future efforts to advance the field.
As populations age around the world, there is an urgent need to address the inadequate and unequal provision of care and support to older and disabled people.
This book represents the first collective effort to use the concept of care poverty to analyse unmet needs and inequalities in care at an international level and from a social policy perspective. It presents pioneering empirical studies and novel theoretical and methodological approaches to unmet needs and care poverty.
This volume points the way forward for international care research and, in particular, for the growing field of research on inadequate care and support.
The COVID-19 pandemic took many by surprise when it arrived in Britain in early 2020. Daily lives changed dramatically with the introduction of unprecedented restrictions and lockdowns. How did people react?
This book draws on the diaries of 68 men and women aged 70 and above, capturing their thoughts and experiences over the following months. Although these older diarists considered themselves among the more fortunate at the time, their entries reveal both highs and lows. There were anxieties and frustrations but also much positivity and, often, a reluctance for an over-hasty return to pre-pandemic times.
Through these personal and contemporaneous accounts, the book offers a unique contribution to our understanding of the pandemic and its significance in modern social history.
Literature on sex, intimacy and sexuality in later life has been heavily influenced by perspectives from more affluent regions, perpetuating the belief that the West is more sexually progressive and liberal than other cultures.
This book challenges this belief by exploring diverse cultures and perspectives from the majority world, which are often overlooked. It highlights the importance of learning from cultures in the global South and East, dismantling stereotypes that frame them as sexually conservative or inferior.
Variously drawing on structuralist, postcolonial and decolonial theory as well as social anthropology, the book critically examines binaries related to culture, age, sex and intimacy, highlighting the need to decentre Western perspectives as the benchmark while other cultures and practices are misunderstood.
Gender diversity and non-conformity are becoming increasingly visible within society. As more trans and non-binary service users ‘come out’ and trans populations age, practitioners and service providers working in health care, social care, welfare services and housing, will begin to see a growing number of older gender-diverse service users.
With contributions from trans and non-binary scholars and practitioners and those with lived experience, this book outlines what good care and support looks like for older trans and non-binary people. This book provides a range of reflective learning activities that can be used by educators, policy makers and practitioners in healthcare, social care, public and community services to develop their knowledge and skills to ensure their practice is affirmative and inclusive.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
How can we design, develop and adapt urban environments to better meet the needs and aspirations of an increasingly diverse ageing population?
This edited collection offers a new approach to understanding the opportunities and challenges of creating ‘age-friendly’ communities in the context of urban change. Drawing together insights from leading voices across a range of disciplines, the book emphasises the urgent need to address inequalities that shape the experience of ageing in urban environments.
The book combines a focus on social justice, equity, diversity, and co-production to enhance urban life. Exploring a range of age-friendly community projects, contributors demonstrate that, despite structural obstacles, meaningful social change is achievable at a local level.
Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
The concept of ‘generations’ has become a widely discussed area, with recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic revealing our dependence on intergenerational relationships both within and beyond the family. However, the concept can often be misunderstood, which can fuel divisions between age groups rather than generating solutions.
This collection introduces and explores the growing field of generational studies, providing a comprehensive overview of its strengths and limitations. With contributions from academics across a range of disciplines, the book showcases the concept’s interdisciplinary potential by applying a generational lens to fields including sociology, literature, history, psychology, media studies and politics.
Offering fresh perspectives, this original collection is a valuable addition to the field, opening new avenues for generational thinking.
The symptoms of menopause transitions have profound implications for work and are, in turn, affected by work. Despite this, the topic is rarely discussed in management and organization studies.
Providing an overview of existing knowledge in the field of menopause in the workplace, this collection re-theorises the management of human resources as it relates to the connections between gender, age and the body in the workplace environment with an intersectional analysis.
Offering theoretical frameworks from experts as well as possible practical approaches that can be implemented in workplaces to support women transitioning through menopause, this is a go-to reference for academics and policy makers working in the field.
The last few decades have seen an increase in the migration of ageing people from richer Northern and Western countries to poorer Southern and Eastern countries.
This book seeks to understand the motivation behind retirement migration and how precarity in later life contributes to this trend.
Drawing on accounts of retirees from different nations, the book examines how welfare policies in their home country versus their country of migration shape their experiences of migration.
It shows how ageism impacts social precarity across different social classes, and across economic, social and health dimensions. It also evaluates how local and global systems of inequalities influence retirement migrants’ experience, providing both opportunities and constraints that differ across countries.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This book provides new insights into the challenges facing older people in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It draws upon novel qualitative longitudinal research which recorded the experiences of a diverse group of people aged 50+ in Greater Manchester over a 12-month period during the pandemic. The book analyses their lived experiences and those of organisations working to support them, shedding light on the isolating effects of social distancing.
Covering 21 organisations, as well as 102 people from four ethnic/identity groups, the authors argue that the pandemic exacerbated existing inequalities in the UK, disproportionately affecting low-income neighbourhoods and Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) communities.
The book outlines recommendations in relation to developing a ‘community-centred approach’ in responding to future variants of COVID-19, as well as making suggestions for how to create post-pandemic neighbourhoods.
