Hearing older voices in ageing research

Planning for our ageing population and ensuring that the views of older people are fed into research is the theme of a workshop session, led by CARDI at the tenth international Living Knowledge conference this month www.livingknowledge2009.org/.

CARDI organised a workshop entitled ‘Encouraging Models of Knowledge Exchange – Planning for Demographic Change’ at the event, promoted by the global Science Shops movement and held at Queen’s University Belfast on 27-29 August 2009.

This event provides an opportunity for key thinkers and practitioners in the area of community based research and university and community partnerships to examine current social policy and research issues. The meeting provides opportunities for collaboration and ensuring priority social issues are top of policy agendas.

CARDI’s work focus on building the ageing research community and this conference involves speakers who have become involved in this area of work in the last few years.

· Martha Doyle from Trinity College Dublin will deliver a paper on ‘Conducting participatory research with older people’.

· Liesbeth De Donder from Vrije University in Brussels will speak about ‘Feelings of safety in context: social policy for and by older people – peer to peer research with older people’.

· Michael Quinn from Queen’s University will examine the issue of ‘The voices of older people in longitudinal studies’.

The overall theme of the seminar, knowledge exchange, reflects CARDI’s view that research must be carried out for a purpose – to improve the quality of life of older people and encourage their participation in all aspects of life.

The presentations will be available on the CARDI website post event.

For more information contact: Kate Morris, Communications Officer, CARDI at 00353(0) 867927684.

www.cardi.ie