The Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, Oxford’s Humanities and Healthcare Programme and the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life are co-hosting a seminar series on The Construction of Ageing.
While ageing is often considered a biological process, what it means to be young or old, youthful or elderly, is inevitably socially constructed. This suggests that there is no universal meaning to the biological processes of ageing. Accordingly, it is important to examine assumptions that surround the various ways that ageing and ageing persons are and have been conceptualised and discussed. In this seminar, such matters will be illumined by a range of disciplinary voices from the humanities and social sciences: theologians and philosophers examining the ethical significance and practical import of ageing as a feature of the human condition, artists reflecting on the portrayal of aged bodies, social scientists illuminating the social construction of retirement and ageism, historians and classicists considering how ageing has been represented over time. It is anticipated that the interaction of these interdisciplinary perspectives will provide a critical vantage point on how policy interventions impact the experiences of ageing persons in the specific contexts in which they live and, more generally, the possibility of flourishing in later life.

Convenors: Professor Sarah Harper, Dr Ashley Moyse, Professor Joshua Hordern