Series: The New Dynamics of Ageing
This series showcases state-of-the-art research from the New Dynamics of Ageing programme, the first multi-disciplinary and the largest programme of ageing research in Europe. Its findings provide insights into ageing and its impact on a global scale.
Together, the books in the series embrace all disciplines with an interest in ageing, encompassing direct engagement of older people and user organisations, and contain all of the main research findings, making them an essential source of reference.
The New Dynamics of Ageing
You are looking at 11 - 20 of 61 items
Technology is increasingly being recognised as a valuable contributor to supporting people to live and age well. As such there are increasing opportunities for working with older adults to create technologies – both devices and applications – that they want to use. The NANA (Novel Assessment of Nutrition and Ageing) project set out to create a new technology toolkit for older adults to use at home to keep track of their diet, mood, cognitive function and physical activity. This was made possible by whole project management, transdisciplinary working and partnership with older adults. This chapter describes the activities undertaken to create and validate the NANA toolkit and the implications of this work.
This chapter explores how and why older people construct narrative identities in response to encounters with contemporary visual art. The respondents rejected the negative characteristics they associated with being old and articulated a more positive counter narrative associated with active and involved older people. The narratives they constructed were also inflected by meta-narratives of family, class and the history of north-east England. This work has implications for arts and cultural policy suggesting that more emphasis be placed on how artworks are consumed. It also provides a greater understanding of the value of arts engagement for older people.
This chapter looks at the mechanisms and strategies used by older people to navigate unfamiliar spaces as pedestrians. Based on interviews with forty-two older people collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, a street audit and interviews with planners, three principal factors helped or deterred older people in navigating an unfamiliar urban setting – the use of landmarks, the availability and usability of signage and if a public space was associated with memories. Stressful areas were identified as those where there was a perception of sensory overload and shared and unclear spaces. The implications for planners are discussed with regard to creating spaces and places that assist older people to remain active and independent.
This volume and its companion, The New Dynamics of Ageing Volume 1, provide comprehensive multi-disciplinary overviews of the very latest research on ageing. Together they report the outcomes of the most concerted investigation ever undertaken into both the influence shaping the changing nature of ageing and its consequences for individuals and society.
This book concentrates on four major themes: autonomy and independence in later life, biology and ageing, food and nutrition and representation of old age. Each chapter provides a state of the art topic summary as well as reporting the essential research findings from New Dynamics of Ageing research projects. There is a strong emphasis on the practical implications of ageing and how evidence-based policies, practices and new products can produce individual and societal benefits.
This is the second volume arising from the ground-breaking New Dynamics of Ageing Research Programme. While the Programme produced many scientific papers and several project-based books this (and its companion volume) is the only place where most of the projects are represented in specially commissioned chapters. Each of these reports the key findings from each research project and places them in a wider context. Each chapter also contains a summary of key findings. Like its predecessor this book covers a wide range of state-of-the-art research on ageing, with a specific focus on autonomy and independence, the biology of ageing, nutrition in later life and representations of ageing.
Despite increasing evidence that continued engagement in creative activities is beneficial as we navigate later life, we still know comparatively little about what participation in theatre, and specifically in theatre-making, means to participants. This chapter presents selected findings from a detailed interdisciplinary case study of one particular theatre - the Victoria/New Victoria Theatre in North Staffordshire - in the lives of older people. The chapter describes how the project took shape; how each of its three strands (archival, interview and performative) developed; and how its rich and complex data set has been used: with a focus on articulating the place of the theatre in people’s lives, and on their understandings of its role in relation to ageing and later life.
This is the second volume arising from the ground-breaking New Dynamics of Ageing Research Programme. While the Programme produced many scientific papers and several project-based books this (and its companion volume) is the only place where most of the projects are represented in specially commissioned chapters. Each of these reports the key findings from each research project and places them in a wider context. Each chapter also contains a summary of key findings. Like its predecessor this book covers a wide range of state-of-the-art research on ageing, with a specific focus on autonomy and independence, the biology of ageing, nutrition in later life and representations of ageing.
Previous research has shown that older women are negatively stereotyped as the focus of a rapidly expanding anti-ageing industry or otherwise absent from the media. This chapter discusses the Representing Self-Representing Ageing project, which worked collaboratively with older women, using a range of participatory visual methods to explore their everyday experiences of ageing. The aim was to create alternative images of ‘ordinary’ older women. The women produced a diverse range of visual artwork including photos, fine art and sculpture, which subsequently has been displayed in exhibitions across the UK. Collectively, project participants called for more representations in the media of older women who had not been surgically or digitally enhanced, and who were making a contribution so that younger people might be less fearful of ageing. Participating in the project enhanced the women’s well-being and sense of public validation, while the project itself has contributed to a new cultural turn in social gerontology.
This chapter discusses how the sleep of older people is linked to issues of autonomy and active ageing. For older people living in the community, this chapter demonstrates how the strategic use of napping is related to the goal of active ageing, discusses the reluctance of older people to take prescribed sleeping medication, and examines how care-giving can adversely affect the sleep of older people. For older people living in care homes, care home routines, staffing levels at night and night-time monitoring by staff can compromise the sleep of care home residents, which has implications for their daytime functioning. This chapter argues that poor sleep is often ignored by both the medical profession and by the general public, yet is fundamental in terms of optimising health and well-being in later life, and enabling older people to achieve independent and active lives.
This chapter discusses approaches to understanding cellular ageing (senescence) through molecular biology approaches. Current scientific ideas surrounding the biological and evolutionary basis of senescence are discussed in this chapter, as are recent findings that demonstrate a strong contribution of senescent cells to age-related decline in health. A new approach to generating senescent cells is described, which accelerates cell ageing in the laboratory based on understandings of premature ageing human Werner syndrome, as is a proteomics approach to probing cellular senescence. The premise that ageing is a social construct is refuted from a biological basis, and the importance of approaches to tackling cellular senescence in the human body to improve the quality of later life is strongly advocated.
