“We’ve started out strong,” Dr. Mark Skinner says, speaking about the success of the new Trent University Centre for Aging and Society in its inaugural year. “There are many facets of aging that have yet to be fully explored and understood. I’m pleased with how we are helping inform and shape the conversation from a much-needed critical perspective.”

Announced in the summer of 2013, the new Trent Centre for Aging and Society aims to focus greater attention on issues surrounding the aging population in the City and County of Peterborough and Canada. The Centre has brought together a multidisciplinary group of research faculty with common interests in aging studies to work toward informing public policies that are responsive to the challenges and opportunities facing older people and aging communities locally and internationally.

Over the past year, the Centre and its members have received over $3.1M in funding to further their critical research, including $90,000 in core funding from Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to support research and community engagement activities. Professor Skinner was awarded $19,450 by SSHRC to host the International Symposium on Aging Resource Communities in Tumbler Ridge, BC. Dr. Stephen Katz, another member of the Centre, is part of a $2,993,263 Concordia University-led SSHRC funded study examining aging, technology and digital communication. Trent is also hiring a new Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Aging, Health and the Life-Course.

Trent’s Centre for Aging and Society also partnered with the City and County of Peterborough, and the Municipality of Trent Lakes in acquiring a $165,000 Trillium Foundation grant to support the Age-Friendly Peterborough initiative. Centre members are currently supervising 20 health geography and nursing students who are completing community-based education projects for Age-Friendly Peterborough.

In addition to research and community projects, the Centre has focused on educating Trent students and community members by developing Continuing Education workshops and university courses, including the on-line undergraduate course Critical Perspectives on Aging. These courses have been supported by the launch of the Aging & Society Seminar Series, which featured recent public lectures on intimacy among couples coping with Alzheimer’s disease by Dr. Linn Sandberg from Stockholm University (Sweden) and grandmother’s activism across Canada by Dr. May Chazan, Trent’s Canada Research Chair in Feminist and Gender Studies.

Other highlights from the Centre’s inaugural year include the appointment of leading geriatrician Dr. Jenny Ingram from the Kawartha Memory Clinic to the Centre’s advisory committee, co-hosting with the Peterborough Council on Aging, the annual Peterborough Seniors Summit: A Critical Dialogue featuring Globe and Mail columnist Jeffery Simpson, and sponsoring the Central East LHIN Regional Specialized Geriatric Services’ conference in Lindsay, Ontario.

About the Trent Centre for Aging and Society

Leveraging its strategic location in one of Canada’s most rapidly aging communities and its legacy of interdisciplinary, community engaged scholarship, Trent University established the Trent Centre for Aging and Society in 2013. This integrated, cross-disciplinary research centre examines the social and cultural issues that are shaping the lives of seniors and the responses of the communities in which they live and, in doing so, will bring a much‐needed critical perspective to the debates about aging and old age in 21st Century Canada. For more information please visit trentu.ca/aging. 

Photo: Dr. Mark Skinner and MPP Laurie Scott (Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock) with Trent University nursing and health geography students, pictured in Buckhorn last month at the announcement of the Ontario Trillium Foundation grant in support of Age-Friendly Peterborough.

Posted on Monday, November 17, 2014.