Member Spotlight

Q&A with Paul Higgs BSc, PhD, Professor of the Sociology of Ageing, University College London, United Kingdom.

		"The process of research and scholarship is one marked by progression and integration rather than by events of moment."
Meet Paul.

Q: Why did you become a member and how does GSA assist with your professional development?
A: I became a member in 2003 when Scott Bass (then at UMBC) invited me and my colleague Chris Gilleard to discuss our book Cultures of Ageing: Self, Citizen and the Body at the San Diego Annual Meeting. Going to that meeting opened our eyes to the breadth of the work being done in social gerontology in North America. Not only did we find an engaged audience for our ideas but we also made links with researchers who shared our interests in the changing nature of later life. I joined the GSA that year and have been coming back since. Regarding professional development it must be remembered that gerontology is not yet an established discipline in the UK. Rather it is composed of collections of researchers and scholars organised around social science, biology and biomedicine each with their own organisation. One of the fascinating aspects of coming to the GSA is witnessing gerontology as a professional identity able to influence wider debates and call upon institutional resources.

Q: How did you get interested in the field of aging?
A: My first research job after completing my PhD at Kent University was in the Department of Geriatric Medicine at St George’s Hospital Medical School in London. Peter Millard who was head of the department took a very inclusive approach to what he saw as the issues surrounding old age. These not only included the use of mathematical modeling to understanding patient flow in hospitals but also an awareness of the social and political dimensions of ageing. Consequently, while I had studied sociology and social policy I was able to spend a number of years thinking about their application to later life. I was also fortunate to meet at the same time Chris Gilleard who was coming at these questions from a more psychological point of view. We both argued and discussed our approaches until in time our views coalesced into what has been a fruitful series of projects and publications.

Q: What are your key responsibilities at your job?
A: I work within UCL Medical School where my main responsibility is teaching medical sociology to undergraduate medical students. In the UK students start medical school at 18 and undertake a 5 or 6 year course still more or less divided into pre-clinical and clinical parts. I also coordinate the teaching of social sciences across the pre-clinical teaching. Beyond that I am relatively free to pursue my own research interests in ageing which have ranged from health and retirement, quality of life, consumption and generational change to the question of ageing and embodiment.

Q: What has been your most memorable experience in gerontology and aging research?
A: The process of research and scholarship is one marked by progression and integration rather than by events of moment. However one event does stick out and that was being finalists in the 2007 GSA Social Gerontology Award competition. Being able to present our work and to be honoured in this way was a tremendous fillip when put alongside the revisions and re-submissions that are the normal fate of publishing.

Q: Why is it important for other individuals to join GSA?
A: Writing as gerontologist based overseas I think that joining the GSA is an important way of expanding horizons and finding out who is working in similar fields. The opportunities that exist in Europe do not as yet match up to the breadth of experience that is available through the GSA as well as the excitement around the study of age and ageing that exists in the USA.

Q: Do you have any tips for emerging gerontologists?
A: To be open to the diversity and changing nature of ageing and later life.

Q: Tell us a little about your most recent activities/accomplishments?
A: Most recently I co-authored a book with Ian Rees Jones Medical Sociology and Old Age: Towards a Sociology of Health in Later Life which brings together many of the concerns that I deal with in my teaching at UCL. I have also had published (or are about to be published) a series of papers written with Chris Gilleard on the topic of the fourth age. These are intended to balance out what some have seen as our concern with the Third Age. In addition Chris and I are currently completing a book looking explicitly at the body and ageing hopefully to be called Ageing and Corporeality.