Good news from AAGE!

Save the date! AAGE will be holding a standalone conference on “Aging and Social Justice” at the University of Toronto, June 27-28 2020! Please respond to our CFP by February 17th. 2020, and please share widely!

Conference committee members: Jason Danely, Jean Schensul, Aaron Seaman, Christine Verbrugge, Cristina Douglas, Cortney Rinker-Hughes, Celeste Pang, Tam Perry, Pia Kontos, Leslie Carlin, and Janelle Taylor.

Jean Schensul (running unopposed) was acclaimed and will serve a second 5-year term as Treasurer. Fayana Richards (with approximately 2/3 of the votes) will begin a three year term as Secretary. Congratulations and Welcome! Thanks to all who agreed to stand for election, all who took part in voting, and to Past-President Jason Danely for coordinating the process. The position of President-Elect remains open, please consider stepping forward to do this rewarding work on behalf of our organization. Click here to nominate yourself or someone else to be the next President of AAGE!

Journal:

Our open-access peer-reviewed journal, Anthropology & Aging Quarterly, continues to publish two issues per year (Feb/March and Aug/Sept) featuring original research articles as well as photoessays, book reviews, and interviews.

Cortney Hughes Rinker (George Mason U), will be concluding her term and stepping down after the next issue in early 2020. Joining her as Co-Editor, and then stepping in as Editor, will be Henrik Hvenegaard Mikkelsen (U of Copenhagen). Thanks Cortney for doing a fabulous job, and welcome Henrik!  Thanks to the Editorial Search committee members (Cortney Hughes, Jason Danely, Samantha Solimeo, and Christine Verbruggen), and to all who expressed interest in doing this important and valuable work.

 Awards:

At the recent AAA business meeting in Vancouver, AAGE was delighted to recognize three emerging scholars for their work in anthropology of aging and the life course.

The Margaret Clark Award, which brings a cash prize and honors Margaret Clark’s work in socio-cultural gerontology and medical anthropology as well as her commitment to mentoring younger colleagues, went to undergraduate student Olivia Brophy (St. Mary’s College of California) for her paper “Mayan Aging Ideals: Networked Care in the Turnos Model,” and Ph.d. student Yifan Wang (Rice U) for her paper “Education of Values: Population Aging, Marketing, and Eating Independently.”  Congratulations to both! Thanks to Samantha Grace and Jessica Robbins for co-chairing the committee, and to our volunteer reviewers (Fayana Richards, Aaron Seaman, Rose Keimig, Mark Luborsky, Sarah Lamb, Anna Corwin, Samantha Solimeo, and Janelle Taylor).

The Jacob Climo Award honors the work of past-president Jacob Climo, whose research focused on intergenerational relationships, the ethnography of memory, aging and elder care around the world, grandparents parenting grandchildren, and narratives about aging parents. The award, which provides a cash prize to support conference travel costs for a graduate student, was this year awarded to Tanja Ahlin (U of Amsterdam) who traveled to Vancouver to present a paper at the AAA on “Becoming ‘Good Daughters’: Enacting Gender through Elder Care Practices in Syrian Christian Transnational Families in Kerala, South India.” Congratulations Tanja! Thanks to award committee members Jay Sokolovsky, Maria Cattell, Celeste Pang, and Christine Verbruggen.

 AAA & GSA:

In partnership with the Anthropology of the Life Course Interest Group of the AAA, the AAGE organized a rich and diverse array of activities at the recent AAA conference in Vancouver:

• a lively interlocutor session with Parin Dossa (Simon Fraser University)
• a fun and friendly networking dinner
• a well-attended business & awards meeting
• an invited session on “Care Across Borders: Intergenerational Care Through Digital Technologies In Transnational Family Life,” organized by Tanja Ahlin (U of Amsterdam)
• an workshop on “Methods for Disseminating and Translating Research to Action Across the LifeSpan,” featuring Jean Schensul, Jason Danely, Narelle Warren, Margaret LeCompte, Andrea Whittaker, and Stephen Schensul
• a speed-mentoring session co-sponsored by the Association of Senior Anthropologists, on “Anthropology In and Of the Life Course,” organized by Celeste Pang (U of Toronto)

AAGE members who attended the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) conference also got together for an informal gathering and discussion, with plans to coordinate a more formal AAGE presence at next year’s GSA.

AAGE members who will be attending other conferences coming up — such as SfAA, EASA, IUAES — it is easy to get connected! Please don’t hesitate to reach out to Board members (Janelle Taylor, Jean Schensul, and Fayana Richards) and/or reach out directly to fellow members by writing to aage@simplelists.org

AAGE is thriving and growing! I am pleased to report that our membership has grown in the past year, with new members hailing from all across the world, a majority of them students and emerging scholars. Special welcome to these members who have joined in 2019: Nancy Konvalinka, Sabrina Lessard, Maria-Keiko Yasuoka, Grace Yan Zhang, Patrick Devlieger, David Reyes, Kim Rice, David Osorio Garcia, Laura Sutherland, Rehema Namaganda, Tanja Ahlin, Rachel Howard, Zhe Yan, Yifan Wang, Daniel Lopez, Farahnaz Fallah-Tafti, Brooke Jespersen, Carla Greubel, Shahin Tolouashtiany, Clarisse Barbier, Cynthia Fasola, and Julia Jennings! 

Thanks to this, our organization is in strong financial position to continue to support our journal, awards, AAGE activities at conferences, and standalone conference. Please share the word, and encourage your colleagues and students to join! It’s quick, easy, and inexpensive — just go here.

Happy holidays and all best wishes  — hope to see you here in Toronto in June!

Janelle Taylor,

President, AAGE