The ‘Living Library’ at the ESRC Festival of Social Science
Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2025 7:15 am
Bram Vanhoutte and Finn Dymond-Green on their ESRC Festival of Social Science ‘Living Library’ event.
How does it feel to age? Which life changes make you feel older?
For the ESRC Festival of Social Science – a national celebration of how social science affects everyday lives – we have organised a ‘Living Library’ event on “how ageing feels” which will take place in central germany rcs data library in Manchester on Wednesday 7th November from 12.30-3.00. It’s a free, drop-in event.
The living library, which consists of human books that are available to consult, containing lived experience and personal insights, is combined with a possibly contrasting backdrop of quantitative data on ageing events based on the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. This event invites people to reshape their image of what ageing is like in the UK, which connects to Bram’s wider research agenda that seeks to redefine ageing dynamically.
My research, which focuses on investigating how exactly people age, underlines that rather than counting a certain number of years, ageing is a multidimensional process, which entails experiencing a number of common events. Things like:
While these events are things that can happen to all of us as we grow older, importantly they happen at widely differing times for different people.
How does it feel to age? Which life changes make you feel older?
For the ESRC Festival of Social Science – a national celebration of how social science affects everyday lives – we have organised a ‘Living Library’ event on “how ageing feels” which will take place in central germany rcs data library in Manchester on Wednesday 7th November from 12.30-3.00. It’s a free, drop-in event.
The living library, which consists of human books that are available to consult, containing lived experience and personal insights, is combined with a possibly contrasting backdrop of quantitative data on ageing events based on the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. This event invites people to reshape their image of what ageing is like in the UK, which connects to Bram’s wider research agenda that seeks to redefine ageing dynamically.
My research, which focuses on investigating how exactly people age, underlines that rather than counting a certain number of years, ageing is a multidimensional process, which entails experiencing a number of common events. Things like:
While these events are things that can happen to all of us as we grow older, importantly they happen at widely differing times for different people.