Dear Colleagues

Momentum is building up for the 8th Congress of the International Association of Geriatrics and Gerontology- European Region in Dublin, April 23-26 2015, the largest congress on research in ageing to be held in Europe this decade , based in the superb Convention Centre Dublin, in the heart of the Irish capital city.

This e-zine is a reminder that abstract submission for symposia closes in one weeks time, on 15 September 2014: the closing date for individual abstract submission is 15 October 2014.

>> Please click on this link to access the online submission system. 

A wide range of keynote speakers have been invited from across Europe and across the range of gerontology, from social and behavioural, through all branches of clinical gerontology to the biology of ageing.

Over the course of the next IAGG-ER Congress e-zines we will be introducing you to some of the keynote speakers.

Timo Strandberg, Finland

Professor Strandberg is the full professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Helsinki and the Physician-in-Chief at Helsinki University Hospital. Since 2013 he has been the president of the European Union Geriatric Medicine Society (EUGMS).

Professor Strandberg’s primary field of interest has been lipid metabolism and its relevance to vascular diseases. Recently he has concentrated on six main topics: 1) successful aging (the quality of life in the late adulthood, the paradoxes of the old age), 2) geriatric syndromes (frailty, connections to vascular diseases), 3) telomeres and risk factors, 4) the special features of cholesterol metabolism in the late adulthood, 5) neurodegenerative diseases (dementia, risk factors and characterization) and 6) the new risk markers for vascular diseases. In May 2014, he was awarded the Sohlberg Prize by the Nordic Gerontology Congress.

Ian Robertson, Ireland

Ian Robertson took up the Chair in of Psychology at Trinity College Dublin having been a Fellow at Hughes Hall, Cambridge. He has visiting professorships at UCL in London and was a Visiting Professor at Columbia University New York. He was the founding director of Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience.

His research on the  brain’s attention systems has led to a number of new ways of measuring how humans pay – or fail to pay – attention and he has  extended this research to the development of new therapeutic methods which have resulted in improved cognitive function in people with attention difficulties.

He has published over 250 papers in journals such as Nature, Psychological Bulletin, Journal of Neuroscience and Neuropsychologia, and in several books, including co-authoring the leading international textbook on cognitive rehabilitation. In 2014 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for Psychological Science in recognition of his “sustained and outstanding distinguished contributions to psychological science”.

Ian has written several books aimed at the general reader, including Mind Sculpture (2000), The Mind’s Eye  (2003), The Winner Effect (2012), all of which have been widely translated. He  blogs on www.thewinnereffect.com and tweets on @ihrobertson

Susanne Iwarsson, Sweden

Since 2005, Susanne Iwarsson is the holder of Mary and Seved Ribbing’s Professorship in Gerontology and Care for Older People at the Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Sweden. With a PhD in medical science (1997) and a registered occupational therapist with clinical experience in geriatrics and primary care, Prof Iwarsson is also engaged in developing ageing research internationally, particularly in Europe.

She is the Head of the research group Active and Healthy Ageing at the Department of Health Sciences, focusing on environmental gerontology in combination with health sciences and neuroscience, studying the ageing individual’s and population’s opportunities for activity and participation in society.

She has been the main or co-supervisor of 18 completed PhD degrees, in Sweden and abroad. She is also the Director of the Centre for Ageing and Supportive Environments (CASE) and the Coordinator of the Swedish National Graduate School for Competitive Science on Ageing and Health.

Professor Janet M Lord, UK

Professor Lord is director of the MRC-Arthritis Research UK Centre for Musculoskeletal Ageing Research and is also a Principal Investigator in the MRC Centre for Immune Regulation at Birmingham University Medical School, leading the Ageing and Immunity theme.

Her primary research focus is in the effect of ageing upon immune function and how this limits the ability of older adults to resolve inflammation and predisposes them to chronic inflammatory disease such as Rheumatoid arthritis. She also researches the link between chronic systemic inflammation and physical frailty.

Professor Lord has a particular interest in the role played by stress (physical and emotional) and the altered HPA axis in modulating immunity and frailty in old age. This has led her in to the field of trauma research and she is now also a theme lead in the NIHR Surgical Reconstruction and Microbiology Research Centre looking at factors influencing the immune and endocrine response to trauma. She has published on the synergistic effects of hip fracture and depression on both immunity and physical frailty.

She is currently a member of the MRC Lifelong Health and Wellbeing strategy panel and co-editor in chief of the journal Longevity and Healthspan. In 2013 she was awarded the Lord Cohen of Birkenhead medal for her research and leadership in human ageing and in 2014 was awarded the Glenn Award for biological mechanisms in Ageing by the US Glenn Foundation. She has published over 160 original papers and reviews.

Jan Baars, Netherlands

Jan Baars is Professor of Gerontology at the University for Humanistic Studies in Utrecht, The Netherlands. He studied social sciences and philosophy in Amsterdam, Bielefeld and Berkeley. Since 1970 he has been teaching Theory and Philosophy of the Social Sciences and the Humanities at the universities of Amsterdam, Tilburg and Utrecht. 

Since 1985 he has added a focus on basic concepts of aging and gerontology, leading to many articles in academic journals and to chapters on concepts of time and temporality in the major gerontological Handbooks. He published some influential books in Dutch, such as Het Nieuwe Ouder Worden (3rd edition 2013) and the co-athored De Kunst van het Ouder Worden (7th edition 2014). His most recent book in English is ‘Aging and the Art of Living’ (Johns Hopkins University Press 2012).

Co-authored books include Ageing, Meaning and Social Structure: Connecting Critical and Humanistic Gerontology (Policy Press, 2013). Aging and Time. Multidisciplinary Perspectives’ (Baywood, 2007) and Aging, Globalization and Inequality: the New Critical Gerontology (Baywood, 2006).

Prof. Baars has given master classes at universities in Europe, the United States, South Africa and New Zealand. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, and serves presently as the Chair of GSA’s Humanities and Arts Committee. In 2013 he received the Theoretical Developments in Social Gerontology Award.

Jean-Marie Robine, France

Prof. Robine is a Research Director at INSERM, the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (http://www.inserm.fr), within the CERMES Research group in Paris and the Unit 710 in Montpellier where he heads the research team Biodemography of longevity and vitality. He is also a Study Director at the advanced school Ecole pratique des hautes études (http://www.ephe.sorbonne.fr) in Paris. He studies human longevity, with the aim of understanding the relations between health and longevity. In particular, he measures the impact that the increase in adult life durations may have on the health status of the elderly population.

Since its creation in 1989, he has been the coordinator of the International Network on Health Expectancy (REVES), which brings together more some 100 researchers worldwide (www.reves-network.org).

He is the project leader of the Joint Action European Life and Health Expectancy Information System (www.eurohex.eu), which provides analysis of disability-free life expectancies in the European Union (Healthy Life Years-HLY). He is co-responsible for the development of the International Database on Longevity (IDL) in association with the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Rostock) and INED (Paris).

He is the project leader of the healthy longevity project granted by AXA Research Fund: the Five-Country Oldest Old Project (5-COOP). He is one of the Directors of the new French Research Consortium on ageing and longevity (GDR CNRS 3662, 2014-2017).

Tine Rostgaard, Denmark

The research contributions of Professor Rostgaard, of the Department of Political Science, Aalborg University, Denmark, have mainly been to the field of social care policies for children and older people, and more specifically to the understanding of care regimes, family obligations, welfare mix, care migration and quality in care.

She is presently conducting a national study on the transition between disability and old age as well as a comparative study on community care in South-East Asia, and has recently headed a comparative European project on reforms in home care for elderly.

So, please circulate widely to your colleagues that abstract submission for symposia closes in ONE weeks time, on 15 September 2014: the closing date for individual abstract submission is 15 October 2014. Please click on this link to access the online submission system.

Please excuse us in the event of cross-posting.