On 16 March, it was announced that Greater Manchester had gained World Health Organisation status to become the UK’s first age-friendly city region. This means we are a place committed to enabling older people to actively participate in their community, to stay connected, to stay healthy and active, to provide appropriate support to those who need it, and to treat everyone with respect regardless of age.

To mark this achievement, the region is holding a Festival of Ageing – and The University of Manchester has just had a week of major activities which highlighted its enormous strength and depth of ageing research.

British Society of Gerontology Conference

The University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and the University of Salford jointly hosted the 47th Annual Conference of the British Society of Gerontology, themed around ‘Ageing in an Unequal World’. Reflecting contemporary concerns from researchers, scholars, practitioners and older people around the world about the injustices associated with ageing in an unequal world, the conference questioned how to influence and shape environments for ageing people in the future.

The strength and depth of ageing research in social gerontology at the University was apparent, with two keynote speakers and more than 50 scientific papers and posters presented by our researchers. For the second year running, the prestigious British Society of Gerontology Stirling Prize for the best student poster at the Conference was won by a University of Manchester PhD student, Nadine Mirza.

“We were delighted to bring the most important annual scholarly meeting in the UK in the field of social and behavioural gerontology conference to Manchester – it was a fantastic week for those of us involved in research into ageing, with activities all over the City, a conference Fringe event, a public photography exhibition, a high level meeting of 30 European Cities around what we are doing here in Manchester on the ageing agenda, and of course the conference itself,” said Professor Debora Price, President of the British Society of Gerontology and Director of the University of Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing (MICRA).