Call for Papers
We invite you to join us for the Seventeenth Interdisciplinary Conference on Aging & Social Change, the annual meeting of the Aging & Social Change Research Network, hosted by the Longevity Lab, University of Navarra, taking place in Pamplona, Spain and online.
The Aging & Social Change Research Network is an established international meeting place for researchers, practitioners, policymakers, designers, educators, health professionals, and community leaders working on the social, cultural, economic, and institutional dimensions of aging. The conference welcomes proposals that address aging not only as a demographic trend, but as a central question for how societies organize care, housing, work, technology, public space, family life, and intergenerational responsibility.
Across the world, longer lives are reshaping communities, institutions, and everyday experience. Key issues include aging in place, long-term care, loneliness and social connection, dementia and cognitive health, accessibility, age-friendly cities, housing design, health systems, family caregiving, pensions, work, technology, and the rights and dignity of older adults. We welcome interdisciplinary proposals that engage these questions through research, practice, policy, design, care work, and community-based knowledge.
Special Focus
Aging in Place: Designing Connected Lives, Communities, and Care Systems
The 2027 special focus, Aging in Place: Designing Connected Lives, Communities, and Care Systems, invites participants to examine how people can live longer lives with dignity, connection, autonomy, and care within the places they call home.
Aging in place is not only a matter of housing. It depends on relationships, neighborhoods, transportation, public space, digital access, health services, informal care networks, social participation, and systems of support that make everyday life possible. It asks how homes, cities, institutions, and technologies can be designed around real human needs across the life course.
This special focus invites critical and practical conversations about the future of aging societies. How can communities support older adults without isolating them? How can care systems become more humane, sustainable, and equitable? How can design, policy, technology, and public institutions help people remain connected to family, community, work, culture, and place? What can aging societies teach us about interdependence, responsibility, and the shared conditions of living well?
We welcome proposals that address aging as a social experience and as a design challenge, shaped by care systems, built environments, public policy, health infrastructures, cultural expectations, and everyday relationships.
Themes
- Theme 1: Aging, Place, and Community
- Theme 2: Care, Health, and Well-Being
- Theme 3: Technology, Design, and Accessibility
- Theme 4: Rights, Policy, and Intergenerational Futures
Knowledge Experience and Format
The conference is organized as a hybrid knowledge experience, integrating in-person and online participation within a unified scholarly environment.
For in-person delegates in Pamplona, the conference is designed as a human-scale gathering shaped by conversation, shared inquiry, and place-based exchange. Sessions, talking circles, breaks, and informal encounters create opportunities to connect research with lived experience, professional practice, and the real-world systems that shape aging and care.
For online delegates, the conference is more than a remote viewing option. Accepted proposals become Presentation Pages where presenters share abstracts, media, and supporting materials. Delegates participate through live online sessions, asynchronous engagement, and discussion spaces that remain available before, during, and after the event.
Across both formats, the emphasis is on reciprocal exchange rather than one-way presentation. Whether joining in Pamplona or online, participants are part of a shared knowledge environment where ideas can be presented, discussed, revisited, and developed into future collaborations, publications, policy conversations, and community initiatives.
Publication Pathways
Presenters are invited to further develop their conference work for possible publication in The Journal of Aging and Social Change, the peer-reviewed journal of the Aging & Social Change Research Network.
Participants may also propose longer-form projects for the Network’s book publishing pathways, including monographs and edited collections that advance research on aging, care, health, design, policy, intergenerational life, and social change.
Join Us
We warmly invite you to submit a proposal and join us, either in Pamplona or online, for the Seventeenth Interdisciplinary Conference on Aging & Social Change.
Together, we will examine how longer lives are reshaping society, and how more connected communities, responsive care systems, inclusive technologies, and age-friendly places can support dignity and well-being across the life course.
Sincerely,
Dr. Javier Antón Sancho, Conference Chair, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
Dr. Víctor Larripa Artieda, Conference Chair, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
Dra. Raquel Cascales, Conference Chair, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
Prof. Andreas Motel-Klingebiel, Research Network Chair, Linköping University, Sweden
Dr. Phillip Kalantzis-Cope, Chief Social Scientist, Common Ground Research Networks, United States of America