Ageing in place is critical to the future of ageing societies in Europe. The places where older people live are recognised as fundamental to their long-term health and wellbeing– a fact that has been magnified during the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet almost a third of older people in Europe experience neighbourhood deprivation, a fifth encounter a lack of cohesion, a growing number are homeless, and approximately 3 million continue to reside in institutional settings. These figures show that current policies are failing to support ageing in place.
This is why 9 universities have joined forces under the leadership of the University of Galway to launch HOMeAGE, an interdisciplinary, intersectoral, and international programme of doctoral training and research.
We are associated with this programme to help building bridges between the research that will be conducted by 12 doctoral researchers and the policy work at EU and global level.
Six of our members are taking part in the programme in the so-called Reference Group:
Soteris Avgoustis (PA.SY.DY, Cypris), Rodd Bond (Active Retirement Ireland), Laura Christ (Older Women’s Network, Netherlands), Vassilis Louziotis (50+ Hellas), Katalin Papp (for the Gerontology Science Coordination Center, Hungary) and Amanda Warren (FATEC, Spain).