One-day online event
The EASA Age and Generations Network (AGENET), the IUAES Commission of Aging and the Life Course, and the Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, are delighted to invite you for a one-day online event dedicated to exploring participatory approaches in ageing studies, on September 9, 2025.
We warmly welcome qualitative researchers and practitioners working with older adults who are interested in shaping (research) realities that are responsive to the diverse possibilities and desires of ageing collaborators. This event is particularly interesting to those who are exploring – or planning to explore – participatory approaches as a way of bringing such possibilities and desires to life.
The webinar includes an introduction to the key issues and possibilities of participatory approaches in ageing research and two practice-oriented workshops. A full programme with session abstracts and the bios of the speakers is listed below.
REGISTRATION: The online event is open to all, but registration is required. Please provide your name and affiliation using this registration form . The registration closes on 8th September (Monday), 3pm CEST. The meeting link will be sent to you on the 9th September.
We look forward to your participation!
— The organizing collective
Programme Tuesday, September 9, 2025
10:00 to 12:00 CEST Workshop 1: Field Realities: Reflexivity, Time-Use, and Positionality in Community-Based Research
15:00 to 17:00 CEST WEBINAR Introduction to the Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Approaches in Ageing Researchand discussion with the editors **Participants of the ParticipAge! face-to-face event in Bratislava (September 11–12, 2025) are strongly encouraged to attend this introductory session, as it will provide a solid foundation for the on-site workshop led by Anna Urbaniak on September 11.
17:30 to 19:30 CEST Workshop 2: Collaborative Storytelling and Ageing Futures: A Collaborative Workshop to Explore Alterities to Ageing
PROGRAMME DETAILS:
WORKSHOP 1: Field Realities: Reflexivity, Time-Use, and Positionality in Community-Based Research by Neetu Batra and Ashwin Tripathi (10:00 to 12:00 CEST / 4:00 to 6:00 EDT / 16:00 to 18:00 PST)
ABSTRACT
The workshop Field Realities: Reflexivity, Time-Use, and Positionality in Community-Based Researchprimarily explores the techniques, methods, and ethics that researchers need to consider. For those engaged in community and field-based research, it will emphasise the importance of empathy and reflexivity in qualitative observation. Interactive sessions will include sharing experiences and exploring real-life scenarios through role-plays that simulate participant and quasi-participant roles, along with field challenges, while collectively analysing these situations using sociological and anthropological theories. A key theme of the workshop is the experience of time—its social construction, emotional aspects, and structural determinants—explored through time-use methods and participatory tools. Particular attention will be given to how reflexivity and positionality influence the researcher’s relationship with time, both in the field and within the broader academic context. Ethical considerations and the positionality of the observer will also be discussed.
The workshop will end with a collaborative reflection, encouraging participants to feel more confident in applying these methods across different contexts, reflect on their time-use patterns, and consider how gender, class, and age influence their temporal experience. It concludes with shared reflections and resource exchange to equip researchers with nuanced, ethically sound practices.
BIO
Dr. Neetu Batra, a Senior Fellow at the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), is affiliated with the Giri Institute of Development Studies in Lucknow. Trained in Sociology and Research with a specialisation in Social Gerontology, her academic journey over the past fifteen years has extensively explored the lived realities, vulnerabilities, and resilience of India’s ageing population through sociological and anthropological lenses. Her current research project, “Mental Health Matters: A Holistic Approach to Older Adults in Uttar Pradesh,” employs ethnographic methods and participatory rural appraisal to examine how mental health intersects with caste, gender, family structures, and local ecology. This aligns closely with the anthropological commitment to contextual and immersive fieldwork. She has also explored institutional care, intergenerational transfers, elder isolation, and age-related stigma, which are evident in her works published in The Eastern Anthropologist, the Indian Journal of Gerontology, and the Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Problems.
Dr. Ashwin Tripathi is a Teach@Tuebingen Fellow in the Methods Centre, Faculty of Economics and Social Science (University of Tuebingen). She has completed her post-doctoral research from FLAME University, Pune and her PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar (India). Her research lies at the intersection of ageing studies, leisure and time-use, where she has explored the blurring of productive and unproductive boundaries. She holds expertise in mixed methods and continues to explore LASI and NSSO-TUS datasets from India. Her current project explores the everyday experiences of ageing among older immigrant Indians in Germany through ethnographic methods.
WEBINAR Introduction to the Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Approaches in Ageing Researchand discussion with the editors, Anna Urbaniak and Anna Wanka (15:00 to 17:00 CEST/ 9:00 to 11:00 EDT / 21:00 to 23:00 PST) ***Participants of the ParticipAge! f2f workshop in Bratislava (September 11–12, 2025) are strongly encouraged to attend this webinar***
ABSTRACT
How can ageing research move beyond studying older adults as “subjects” to meaningfully engaging them as co-creators of knowledge? The “International Handbook of Participatory Approaches in Ageing Research” explores this question and presents innovative participatory approaches that reshape the way researchers, practitioners, and policymakers work with and alongside older adults. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical insights and real-world projects, the talk highlights how methodologies such as inclusive research, participatory action research, co-research, and citizen science open new possibilities for amplifying the voices and lived experiences of older adults across cultural, social, and disciplinary boundaries.
The session will introduce the foundations of participatory approaches in ageing research, outlining both their promise and complexity. Through examples from projects in diverse contexts, we will see how older adults have contributed as active participants at different stages of the research cycle—from framing questions to analysing findings and shaping outcomes. Emphasis will be placed on methodological lessons, the ethics of co-creation, and the potential for participatory approaches to transform not only individual studies but the broader research and policy landscape.
By reorienting research practices toward collaborative knowledge-making, participatory approaches challenge assumptions about ageing and promote more inclusive, responsive, and empowering designs. Attendees will gain inspiration and practical insights into how such models can inform their own work—whether in academia, policy, or community practice. Ultimately, this talk showcases how involving older adults as partners rather than subjects enriches research outcomes and ensures that ageing research reflects the voices, needs, and aspirations of those most directly concerned.
BIO
Dr. hab. Anna Urbaniak is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at Jagiellonian University. Anna has extensive experience in aging research and public policy, conducting interdisciplinary studies in social gerontology. Additionally, Anna is Chair of the PAAR-Net COST Action (CA22167) on participatory approaches with older adults, which connects over 300 members from 40 different countries.
Dr. Anna Wanka co-leads the COST-Action PAARNet together with Anna Urbaniak. She is a sociologist and critical gerontologist interested in un/doing difference and the material-discursive construction of age across the life course. Anna did her PhD in Sociology at the University of Vienna, Austria, and is currently a research group leader at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. Her areas of expertise comprise life course transitions and the re/production of intersectional inequalities across the life course, ageing and technologies, age-friendly cities and communities, ageing migrants, and lifelong learning. She has expertise in both qualitative and quantitative methods and has developed reflexive approaches to mixed-methods research.
WORKSHOP 2: Collaborative Storytelling and Ageing Futures: A Collaborative Workshop to Explore Alterities to Ageing by Matthew Lariviere (17:30 to 19:30 CEST/ 11:30 to 13:30 EDT / 23:30 to 01:30 PST)
ABSTRACT
Interest in futures thinking is growing across the social sciences, government agencies, and industry. Yet, older adults and gerontologists have often been overlooked or have not actively engaged with this area in their research, policy development, or practice. This oversight is significant, as policymakers, technology designers, and corporate entities are actively shaping specific visions of ageing and what it means to age well. Ageing, however, is a deeply personal and emotional journey, rooted in individual life stories, as well as the cultural and communal contexts people inhabit.
Rather than conforming to externally imposed ideals of ageing “successfully” or “healthily,” individuals should be empowered to define their own sense of purpose and meaning as they approach and experience later life. Anthropology—particularly its creative and visual fields of inquiry—is uniquely positioned to explore alternative perspectives on ageing. While ethnographic work often captures the present-day experiences of middle-aged and older individuals, creative methods such as speculative storytelling and illustration offer powerful tools for imagining different possibilities for ageing, in collaboration with the communities of our interlocutors.
This workshop will introduce one approach to collaborative storytelling using an online version of The Thing from the Future. Attendees will work collaboratively in groups to explore how people would adapt to societal transformations in near or distant future scenarios of their own creation. Facilitated reflection will be used to probe dystopic and utopic characteristics of the stories, and what these tell us about our own aspirations for ageing, and how we might age ‘otherwise’.
BIO
Dr Matthew Lariviere is a social anthropologist and cultural gerontologist. He is currently Associate Professor of Gerontology at Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. His research explores the possibilities and anticipations of ageing and care futures globally. Recent research projects have included investigations of digital care technology design and delivery in adult social care services in England, policy analysis of digital futures for (older) Britons and South Koreans, and the contextual factors that support older people and their carers to sustain or secure employment. He is the co-founder of the new Ageing Futures Special Interest Group of the British Society of Gerontology, and a previous co-convenor of the European Association of Social Anthropologists Age and Generations Network.