Advisory committee

In December 2006, Baroness Sally Greengross was announced as a Commissioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

She has been a crossbench (independent) member of the House of Lords since 2000 and Chairs three All-Party Parliamentary Groups: Corporate Social Responsibility, Intergenerational Futures: Old & Young Together, and Continence Care. She is the Vice Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia, Ageing & Older People and Major Infrastructure Projects, and is Treasurer of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Equalities.

Sally is Chief Executive of the International Longevity Centre UK, one of twelve centres across the world. She is Chair of the Advisory Groups for the CRUCIBLE project at University College London, the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing (ELSA) at UCL, and the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA). She is President of the Royal College of Occupational Therapists, President of the Pensions Policy Institute and Honorary Vice President of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health. Sally is also Patron of the UK Clinical Ethics Network.

Sally was Director General of Age Concern England from 1987 until 2000. Until 2000, she was joint Chair of the Age Concern Institute of Gerontology at Kings College London, and Secretary General of Eurolink Age. At Age Concern, she established many innovative programmes, including the Employers Forum on Age, and was also responsible for building Age Concern Enterprises into a multi-million-pound business.

Sally holds honorary doctorates from seven UK universities.

Alan joined the Employers Forum on Age in March 2006.

His background underlies the capability of the forum to provide practical support to members concerned about age discrimination issues and the impact of the law on their employment policies.

He has extensive experience as a human resources professional in financial services, manufacturing and consultancy. Between 1994 and 2001, he held a number of senior roles in human resources within the Credit Suisse group and previously within the European HR team at Merrill Lynch.

He writes the legal update materials for the EFA and is involved in a range of advisory work for members.

Alan Blackwell is Reader in Interdisciplinary Design at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, with qualifications in professional engineering, computer science and experimental psychology.

He has over 20 years experience of designing industrial systems, electronic and software products, and more recently as a consultant to design and research organisations.

He has taught design courses and supervised postgraduate design research students in computing, architecture, psychology, languages, music and engineering. He holds fellowships, advisory and visiting posts at Anglia Ruskin University, City University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Victoria University of Wellington and Darwin College Cambridge. He and his students have consulted or carried out contract research for companies including Boeing, Nokia, Intel, Microsoft, Orange, Google, Hitachi and many others.

He is co-founder of the Crucible Network for Research in Interdisciplinary Design.

Alan Blackwell's personal website.

Chris Carey has worked in Cambridge, St Andrews, Royal Holloway and the University of Minnesota and is currently Professor of Greek at UCL. He has been Acting Director of the University of London Institute of Classical Studies and has served in a number of management positions at Royal Holloway and UCL.

His association with the NDA stems from a long connection with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and a belief in the contribution the Arts and Humanities can make to the quality of life.

Mark Gorman is the Director of Strategic Development at HelpAge International. He joined HAI in 1988 as Development Officer, the first full-time staff appointment made by the organisation. Subsequently he became Deputy Chief executive between 1991 and 2007.

Prior to coming to HAI, he worked for development agencies with programmes in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He started his career in 1973 as an Education Officer working for the North-Eastern State Government of Nigeria, and subsequently worked for Voluntary Service Overseas as programme coordinator in Nigeria.

After gaining a first degree in History at Cambridge University he trained as a teacher at the University of London. He holds Masters Degrees from Cambridge and Bristol Universities, the latter in Education in Developing Countries. He has published a number of articles on aspects of ageing in the developing world. He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List 2008.

Tessa Harding was Head of Policy and subsequently Senior Policy Adviser for Age Equality and Human Rights at Help the Aged (1996 – 2006). She previously worked at the National Institute for Social Work (1990 – 96), the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (1984 – 90) and for three local authorities (1972 – 84).

While at Help the Aged, she was a member of the Better Government for Older People steering group, an adviser to the Government’s Beacon Councils programme and to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Older People’s programme. She was on the advisory board of the ESRC Growing Older Programme, a Governor of the Centre for Policy on Ageing and a member of the Kings Fund Inquiry into social care for older people in London.

She developed Help the Aged’s Speaking Up for Our Age programme of support for Senior Citizens Forums and convened the Older People’s Reference Group which advised on the development of the National Service Framework for Older People (2000 – 01). She was later a member of the Government’s Task Force that helped to establish the Commission for Equality and Human Rights and was a UK representative on the Anti-Discrimination Expert Group, Age, the European Older People’s Platform.

She is currently a member of the Advisory Committee for New Dynamics of Ageing and the Attorney General’s Equality and Diversity Advisory Group, and has advised the Crown Prosecution Service on its policy on crimes against the older person. She was awarded an MBE in January 2004 and the Alan Walker prize for her contribution to social gerontology in 2009.

She was educated at the Lycee Francais de Londres (1952 – 61), Keele University (BA Hons 1966) and Brunel University (MA 1977). She was a Harkness Fellow studying long term care and the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act in the USA in 1993 – 94.

David Leon is Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Epidemiology. His current research is focussed on the very high mortality of working age men and women in Russia, in particular the role of alcohol. He is a visiting Professor at the Universities of Bristol, Glasgow and Stockholm.

He is Deputy Chair of the MRC’s Population and Systems Medicine Board and chairs the MRC’s Addiction and Substance Misuse Research Strategy Oversight Group.

Angela has a background in public service, undertaking analytical studies with the Ministry of Defence then the Department of Health, including performance indicators.

This was followed by a career in the NHS, in strategic planning, commissioning and public health roles. During this time she gained her PhD on the Use of Metaphor in a District Health Authority.

She joined Thomas Pocklington Trust in 1998 to review the research policy and has since established a research and development programme and team, funding and disseminating social and public health research on sight loss issues, majoring on housing and lighting.

Bronagh Miskelly is the group editor of Community Care. For several years, she edited GP newspaper, the weekly for family doctors, as well as doctors’ monthly Medeconomics and Enterprise magazine for entrepreneurial businesses.

Bronagh, who started her working life as a community relations youth worker in Belfast, has also worked on both sides of the camera in television production. Bronagh has a long-term interest in social issues through both her work and having an MSc in Politics.

She is also a fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).

Naina is the founder and executive director of PRIAE, Policy Research Institute on Ageing and Ethnicity. She is also Professor of Ageing and Ethnicity at the International School for Communities, Rights and Inclusion at the University of Central Lancashire.

Naina founded PRIAE, an independent international institute in 1998 to meet a large gap in ageing and ethnicity from policy, research, engagement of elders, to service information and innovations. To respond to this gap, she has designed a majority of PRIAE’s programmes raising the necessary funding in income, employment, care, quality of life and citizenship.

She was the Research Leader of the largest European research in the area of ageing and ethnicity called Minority Elderly Care (MEC) under the EC fifth Framework Research Programme.

She was formerly the UK Representative to the Interim Management Board, Fundamental Rights Agency, previously European Monitoring Centre on Racism (EUMC) in Vienna; EUMC Observer to European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance, Council of Europe; Member, NHS Leadership and Race Equality Independent Panel among others.

Email: naina.patel@priae.org

www.priae.org

Chris Phillipson, PhD, is Professor of Sociology and Social Gerontology at the University of Manchester. He will be working closely with MICRA (Manchester Interdisciplinary Collaboration for Research on Ageing).

Chris was previously Professor of Applied Social Studies and Social Gerontology at Keele University where he was founding Director of the Centre for Social Gerontology (1986-1997), Dean of Research for the Faculty of Social Sciences and Pro-Vice Chancellor (2005-2009). Additionally, Chris is a former President of the British Society of Gerontology and has recently been appointed a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

His major research work has been in the field of ageing where he has led a number of research programmes investigating issues relating to pre-retirement education, family and community life in old age, problems of social exclusion, and issues relating to urbanisation and migration.

He received his PhD from Durham University in 1977. His research interests have focused on family and community life in old age, problems of social exclusion, and issues relating to urbanisation and migration.

He has published extensively on age-related matters and his books include:

• Reconstructing old age (Sage, 1998)

• Social theory and social ageing (co-authored, 2003)

• Social networks and social exclusion (co-edited, 2004)

• Ageing, globalisation and inequality (co-edited, 2006)

• Futures of old age (co-edited, 2006)

His is the co-editor (with Dale Dannefer) of the forthcoming Sage Handbook of Social Gerontology.

He is a former President of the British Society of Gerontology, a member of the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences and has been a visiting professor to universities in Japan and Australia.

Jim is currently the Development Coordinator for the Association for Education and Ageing. In this capacity he is involved in broadening and increasing membership, consulting with older learners, and helping organise conferences and seminars.

In addition, Jim is an Honorary Research Fellow with the Institute of Lifelong Learning at the University of Leicester. With the Institute he is engaged in two European funded projects looking at curriculum development in later life learning, staff training and effective networking.

Jim is also engaged in the Institute’s ESRC funded research seminars series looking at the benefits of later life learning, and in a long running free public seminar series looking at key topical issues around ageing today and their relevance to later life learning.

Jim has recently worked with NIACE and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in an advisory role as a result of the Learning Revolution White Paper in spring 2009. The areas of interest are around Learning in Care Settings and the role of the voluntary sector in lifelong learning. He is also advising NIACE in its Department of Health funded project examining the educational aspects of preventing and overcoming elder financial abuse.

In 2010, Jim was co-chair of a workshop on later life learning at the European Commission led celebration for the tenth anniversary of the Grundtvig programme and has been invited to be a rapporteur at a similar workshop as part of the Spanish Government’s EU Presidency active ageing conference in Logrono, Spain in May 2010.

He has just completed a term as a trustee of Age Concern Northamptonshire.

In 2008 Jim retired from NIACE where had spent 12 years as the Older and Bolder Development Officer.

Email: jim.soulsby@btinternet.com

Anthea Tinker has been Professor of Social Gerontology at King’s College London since 1988. She has been on the staff of three universities and three Government Departments and has been a Consultant to the WHO, EU and OECD. She also chairs the College Research Ethics Committee.

She is the sole author of ten books and co-author of twenty. She has also written over 300 articles. She has carried out research on housing, assistive technology, family care, older workers, community care, older women, very old people, elder abuse, falls and accidents.

She was awarded the CBE in 2000 in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for Services to Housing for Older People, was elected a Founding Member of the Academy of Learned Societies for the Social Sciences in 1999. She was President of the Section of Geriatrics and Gerontology, Royal Society of Medicine 1998 – 2000.

She was awarded the title of Fellow of the British Society of Gerontology in 2008. She was one of the Women of the Year in 2002.

Anthea is Deputy Chair of the NDA Advisory Committee.