Connecting research, policy, and lived experience across the life course.
The Aging & Social Change Research Network investigates how demographic transformation is reshaping lives and institutions—from health systems and labor markets to family relations and cultural representations. Member-based and scholar-led, it offers a global forum for interdisciplinary exchange on the meanings, challenges, and opportunities of aging.
Founded in 2011, the Aging & Social Change Research Network was created in response to rapid demographic shifts and the recognition that aging is not only a medical issue but a major social and policy concern. From the beginning, it has focused on how longer lives reshape families, work, welfare systems, and public life, bringing together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in a member-based, scholar-led community.
The International Conference on Aging & Social Change is a truly international conference. Hosts have included the University of California, Berkeley; the University of British Columbia; Linköping University; Toyo University; the University of Vienna; Jagiellonian University; the Polytechnic University of Marche; and the University of Galway. These meetings have allowed comparative conversations about welfare regimes, health systems, intergenerational relations, and the everyday experience of aging in different cultural contexts.
Leadership has given the Network a clear sociological and life-course focus. Sharon Wray, the Founding Chair (2011–2016), emphasized the lived realities of aging and the ways gender, class, and culture shape later life. Since 2017, Professor Andreas Motel-Klingebiel (Linköping University) has served as Chair and Editor, drawing on his work in social gerontology and comparative welfare research to strengthen the Network’s attention to inequality, policy, and structural change.
Across its history, the Network has invited plenary speakers who have helped define current debates in aging research and practice. Figures such as James Nazroo, Teresa Liu-Ambrose, Susanne Iwarsson, Kieran Walsh, and Amanda Grenier have addressed topics including health and functional ability, social gradients in aging, age-friendly environments, and the politics of care and autonomy. Their contributions have kept the Network’s focus firmly on the link between individual lives and social systems.
The Journal of Aging and Social Change publishes research on the intersections between aging and social structures, covering gerontology, sociology, public health, demography, economics, and policy studies. It is Hybrid Open Access, double-anonymous peer reviewed, and indexed in major databases, ensuring that findings about aging and inequality reach an international readership. Each year, the Aging and Social Change International Award for Excellence highlights one article from the ten highest-ranked papers in the journal. Award-winning work has addressed age-friendly community design, participatory arts projects, pension reform, supported decision-making, and access to health and care. The award includes Open Access publication and an invitation to present at the following year’s conference, linking recognition directly back into the Network’s ongoing discussions.
The Aging & Social Change Book Imprint supports longer-form projects on aging, publishing monographs and edited volumes on topics such as care, labor, retirement, housing, community, and policy reform. With Open Access options and a globally diverse author base, it extends the Network’s work beyond the conference and journal into sustained, programmatic research.
Today, the Aging & Social Change Research Network is a reference point for scholars and practitioners who view aging as a central challenge and opportunity for contemporary societies. Through its conferences, journal, and book imprint, it documents how aging is changing—and asks how social, economic, and political systems can adapt in fair and sustainable ways.
The Network is currently chaired by Professor Andreas Motel-Klingebiel (Linköping University, Sweden). The Founding Chair was Professor Sharon Wray (University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom), whose leadership established the Network’s commitment to inclusion, critical dialogue, and global reach. Together they have helped shape the Network as a leading interdisciplinary forum for research on aging and social change.
Current Chair and Editor
(2017 - )
Founding Chair and Editor
(2011-2016)
The Aging & Social Change Conference has a rich history of featuring leading and emerging voices from the field, including:
Director of Centre for Global Leadership, Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, USA
(2011)
Reader in Sociology, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK
(2012)
Director, Aging, Mobility, & Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
(2012)
Project Co-Director, The Greying of AIDS, New York City, USA
(2013)
Honorary Professor, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
(2014)
Executive Director, Midlands Community Development Corporation, Columbia, USA
(2015)
Professor, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
(2016)
Professor & Director, Centre for Ageing and Supportive Environments, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
(2016)
Acting Director, Irish Centre for Social Gerontology; Director, Project Lifecourse, Institute for Lifecourse and Society
(2017)
Professor, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work; The Norman and Honey Schipper Chair, Gerontological Social Work; Senior Scientist, Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute, University of Toronto, Canada
(2019)
Over the years Aging & Social Change Research Network has had the pleasure of working with the following organizations:
