Members’ Directory

Faatihah Niyi-Odumosu; Asociate Professor of Physical Activity and Health Promotion

The Manchester Urban Ageing Research Group (MUARG) is an interdisciplinary research group which brings together researchers from a wide variety of backgrounds who work closely together with national, regional, and local government, voluntary and community organisations, national and international non-governmental organisations, and older people, to promote age-friendly urban environments. The aim is the group is threefold: first, to undertake pioneering, interdisciplinary, and globally reaching research on urban ageing; second, to champion novel methodologies and approaches that actively involve older people as co-investigators, thereby fostering an inclusive, participatory and collaborative research ethos; and third, to actively contribute to the development of evidence-based policy and practice aimed at improving the experience of ageing in cities and reduce social exclusion in later life.

CADA exists to drive system change for under-represented and under-served older creatives and communities. We use radical approaches that celebrate our ageing. As a national creative charity, we work with academic partners to explore novel projects and dynamic partnerships that challenge the narrative on ageing through the lens of intersectionality.

DSDC Wales have an international reputation for interdisciplinary ageing and dementia research. Our work is situated within the global trend for longevity and international policy ambitions for healthy ageing, addressing major societal challenges around living as well as possible with chronic and degenerative health conditions, specialising in dementia research.

We work closely with older people, people living with dementia and their carers, together with health and social care professionals to ensure our research will make a difference, improve the quality of care and inform policy and practice development.

Lancaster University's Centre for Ageing Research (C4AR) activity focuses on how we can ensure older people experience an active and healthy older age and how we can “compress morbidity” so that periods of poor health in later life start later. In this way, our healthy lifespan becomes closer to our actual lifespan. This will have significant impacts on us all as individuals as we age, but also on those who care for us and the costs for our health and social care systems.
Our objectives are:

• To promote and conduct high-quality interdisciplinary research concerning ageing throughout Lancaster University, and beyond to national and international academic, policy, practitioner and older people's networks;
• To maintain our strong international visibility and reputation for ageing research and research-led teaching at Lancaster, further establishing Lancaster as a major international hub for research, scholarship and debate around ageing.
• To provide a locus for external funding applications for interdisciplinary ageing research.
• To develop postgraduate training in ageing and provide a major point of attraction for postgraduate teaching and research in the field;
• To develop CPD training on ageing for those tasked with planning and providing care and support for ageing populations across the UK and beyond.

Importantly, Lancaster's reputation for interdisciplinarity underpins its strength in the field of Ageing Research, with researchers across disciplines working together with end-users of our research, including industry, health and social care, and older adults themselves, to gain detailed insights and offer more effective interventions to support a more successful ageing process.

The Healthy Ageing & Care Research Network aims to build a collaborative, interdisciplinary research and knowledge exchange hub to better understand the challenges and opportunities for healthy ageing and care, and to support people as they age. Our four interdisciplinary research clusters are 1) supporting healthy brains and bodies across the life course, 2) nurturing creativity and wellness across generations, 3) fostering a just, equitable, caring society for all ages and abilities, and 4) creating smart and sustainable environments and communities for all. We work with a variety of research centres to strengthen our impact in these areas, including the Oxford Institute of Applied Health Research (OxInAHR), the Institute of Public Care (IPC), the Center for Development and Emergency Planning (CENDEP), and the Centre for Occupational and Rehabilitation Sciences (MOReS)

The Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN) is an interdisciplinary research centre of the University of Reading. We take a multilevel approach to the study of brain and behaviour – from the fast neural timescale of milliseconds, to the slow timescale of life-span development. The centre is home to an advanced suite of neuroimaging technologies, a potent analytics platform, and expertise in the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity.

The Centre is based in the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. Our mission is to advance knowledge and understanding in the field of adult social care through multidisciplinary research and collaboration. CARE will generate high quality evidence about social care for adults (including older adults), rooted in the experience of people who receive care and support and those who provide care, and based on the most rigorous research approaches suitable for the questions being addressed. We are funded by Health and Care Research Wales. We welcome enquiries from potential collaborators.

I co-lead the Mental Health and Wellbeing Faculty Research Theme.

The Institute promotes and supports a wide range of interdisciplinary research, co-created with external partners, that seeks to identify, explain and overcome social, economic, political and cultural obstacles to egalitarian respect and social inclusion.

KISI brings researchers from across the University together with external partners to address a range of problems related to the marginalisation, under-representation and disempowerment of various social groups, including work with older people that builds on Keele's pioneering Centre for Social Gerontology.

Our work with older people is presently focused in two directions. Firstly, on Creative Ageing, that builds on the widely recognised Ages and Stages work of Prof Mim Bernard, MBE, and led now by Prof David Amigoni, in collaboration with the New Vic Theatre, North Staffs. KISI also hosts the coCREATE network, launched in 2021, this network integrates all the innovative community-based, collaborative and creative research across the University. And secondly, the clinical work of Prof Carolyn Chew-Graham's team, which focuses on older people's mental health in Keele's School of Medicine.

The research of the Centre for Lifelong Health brings together internationally recognised researchers working on multidisciplinary projects that aim to increase healthy lifespan.

Our members collaborate locally, nationally, and internationally with other academic institutions, charities, hospitals, and businesses, focusing on four main research themes: mechanisms of disease, prevention of disease, medicines use and integrated technologies.

IMPACT is the UK centre for implementing evidence in adult social care. Working across the four nations and with co-production at its heart, we draw on insights from research, lived experience, and practice knowledge to make a difference to front-line services, and to people’s lives.

We believe “good support isn’t just about ‘services’ – it’s about having a life.“ In pursuit of this vision of adult social care, key objectives for the centre are to enable practical improvements on the ground and make a crucial contribution to longer-term cultural change by:

• Increasing the use of high-quality evidence, leading to better care practices, systems and outcomes
• Building capacity and skills in the adult social care workforce to work with evidence of different kinds to innovate and deliver better outcomes
• Developing relationships between a wide range of stakeholders across the sector, to improve outcomes for people who draw on services and their families
• Improving understanding of what elements of evidence implementation do and do not work in practice, and using this to overcome barriers

Our Dementia Research Group at the University of Hull focuses on research into dementia care not cure. Our mission is to empower people with dementia and their carers to live well. We aim to deliver research on psychosocial interventions and resources that can improve the daily lives of people with dementia and their families. All our research is carried out in collaboration with our lived experience group the Hull Dementia Advisory Board.

Building on existing internationally recognised and transformative research networks the Centre for Ageing and Dementia Research (CADR) is a world class research centre addressing key internationally important questions in ageing and dementia. The Centre integrates multi-disciplinary activity and develops areas of expertise from biological, through psycho-social and environmental, to social policy in ageing and dementia.

At the Centre for Nutrition, Exercise and Metabolism, we seek to understand the impact of nutrition and exercise on human physiology and metabolism. The application of this research ranges from prevention of chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and understanding how therapeutic interventions improve health across the lifespan, through to the enhancement of training and performance for athletes. Examples of major workstreams include:

• Energy balance, appetite and food intake
• Nutrient timing, meal patterns and biological rhythms
• Overfeeding, obesity and weight gain
• Cardiometabolic effects of exercise, physical activity and weight loss
• Ageing, lifestyle and immuno-metabolic health
• Occupational physiology, sports nutrition and human performance
• Molecular mechanisms of insulin action and energy homeostasis

The Healthy Ageing & Chronic Conditions Research Institute is leading innovative inter-disciplinary approaches to promote lifelong health & deliver improved interventions to manage chronic conditions more efficiently.

Throughout our lives we are exposed to environmental, biological, psychological, & social factors that affect our health & well-being. The Healthy Ageing & Chronic Conditions Research Institute produces high quality evidence to better understand these factors, & to develop policies & practices to support people to age well. Our research spans all stages of life & integrates insights from the cellular to the societal level.

This is underpinned by international interdisciplinary research that encompasses large scale observational studies, experimental research, qualitative studies, & the delivery of advances in prevention, early diagnosis & treatment, to improve the clinical management of chronic conditions.

The Centre for Ageing and Biographical Studies (CABS) , The Open University, focuses on ageing across the lifecourse with a particular emphasis on later life. Established in 1995, it was a pioneering interdisciplinary centre at a time of great interest in ageing societies and continues to research and debate contemporary issues in ageing of relevance to academics, practitioners, policy makers and to the broader society.

The ART of Healthy Ageing network is funded by UKRI (BBSRC and MRC) and is led by Prof Miles Witham, Prof Rachel Cooper and Prof Avan Sayer (Newcastle University), Dr Kelly Bowden Davies (Manchester Metropolitan University) and Prof Claire Stewart and Dr Sandra Ortega-Martorell (Liverpool John Moores University). It is one of 11 networks funded as part of the ageing across the life course interdisciplinary research network call.

The focus of this network is building the capacity to translate discoveries in ageing science to intervention studies in humans across the life course.