Sandra Torres
Professor of Sociology & Chair in Social Gerontology Uppsala University President
As a critical gerontologist, Prof. Torres has conducted numerous studies that problematize old age-related constructs (such as successful aging, diminished everyday competence, autonomy, dependence and independence); shed critical light on commonly used methods in health and social care (such as standardized testing, need assessment practice and case file documentation) and deconstruct some of the taken for granted assumptions that guide policy and practice for the older segments of our populations (through policy and media analyses). Her work has so far been framed in dialogue with the international debates on the lack of culture-relevance in gerontology; late in life migration; culturally-appropriate care; the effects of late in life migration upon elderly immigrants' situation; explanatory models of illness; the implications of postmodernism and globalization for anthropo- and ethno-gerontology; the effects of migration upon cultural values and the formulation and preliminary empirical testing of a culturally-relevant theoretical framework for the study of successful aging. Prof. Torres' main contributions to research on aging and old age are based, in other words, on studies that have aimed to expand the social gerontological imagination through the use of knowledge gathered in the sociology of aging and in the sociology of ethnicity/ migration. Her latest book (published in 2015) – which is an anthology edited together with Ute Karl and published by Routledge in their series on Advances in Sociology – is titled Ageing in Contexts of Migration.
Prof. Torres – who held one of the first ERA-AGE FLARE grants (FLARE stands for Future Leader of Aging Research in Europe) - is one of the founders of, and Associate Editors for, one of the first open-access journals in gerontology: the International Journal of Ageing and Later Life. She is also an Editorial Board Member for established peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Aging Studies, Ethnicity & Health and Socialvetenskaplig Tidskrift as well as for recently launched ones such as Vulnerable Groups & Inclusion (re-launched in Sept. of 2015 as Society, Health and Vulnerability). Between 2010-2014 she served also in the Editorial Board of Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences and in the board of Social Policy and Society (between 2009-2014). Prof. Torres has recently stepped down as President of the Swedish Gerontological Society (SGS) and as a council member to the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics (IAGG) (she held both of these positions between 2009-2015). She co-chairs (together w- Dr. Allen Glicksman of the Philadelphia Aging Corporation) the Gerontological Society of America's Interest Group on International Aging and Migration.
Prof. Torres leads - together with Prof. Rafael Lindqvist - the Research Group on Welfare and Lifecourse at Uppsala University’s Dept. of Sociology; a research group that brings together over twenty researchers working on welfare related issues. She leads also The Social Gerontology Group which is comprised of researchers in social gerontology from Uppsala University, Stockholm University and Gävle University College in Sweden.
