Workshop for PhD students:
“Life-course influences on retirement: Researchers’ and stakeholders’ perspectives”
Helsinki, Finland, May 17-19, 2017
The European population is ageing rapidly. This demographic change creates challenges to workplaces and pension schemes, among others. The diminishing number or workers and the growing number of retirees are of special concern, because they strain the economy and public budgets. As a result, employers and policymakers urgently ask how best to react to population ageing. In response to this demand, we organize a workshop that trains PhD students to tackle the consequences of population ageing more effectively. First, the workshop develops the PhD students’ research skills by discussing how they can utilize the life-course perspective to study population ageing. The life-course perspective is concerned with long-term effects within people’s lives, and using it as a tool for intervention into population ageing is still a young idea. During the workshop, each PhD student presents their research and receives feedback from a designated senior researcher and the other participants. Second, the workshop introduces PhD students to stakeholder engagement, which is the involvement of those people potentially affected by the research in the research process. This engagement increases the practical relevance and social impact of research findings. During the workshop, the PhD student receive training in stakeholder engagement and they listen to keynote speeches in which senior researchers discuss their research with stakeholders like trade union representatives and practitioners.
For a complete call for papers, see http://blogs.helsinki.fi/komp/
For inquiries and to submit your abstract, email prof. Kathrin Komp kathrin.komp [at] helsinki.fi .
The workshop is organized by Helsinki University, the Finnish Center for Pensions, the Research Network on Ageing in Europe, the European Social Policy Analysis Network, and the Finnish Social Policy Association.