Working Groups
ROSEnet has five different working groups (WG), representing the five core forms of exclusion. Click on the WG title for a description of each, and the contact details of the associated co-leaders.
Comprising of researchers and policy stakeholders, these groups represent the main working structure of the action and are responsible for most of the collaborations and research activities within the Action. The WGs have five objectives which are linked directly to the Action’s primary objectives but focus specifically on the kind of exclusion that the WG is targeting. These objectives are:
- Synthesise existing knowledge, bring together evidence and information from different disciplines and different geographic regions.
- Critically investigate the construction of life-course exclusion, investigating causes of old-age exclusion and the complex pathways that lead to disadvantage in later life within a specific domain.
- Assess the implications of exclusion across the life course, focusing on the consequences of exclusion in a specific domain for individuals, communities and wider societies.
- Develop new conceptual frameworks that expand theoretical thinking on the ways in which exclusion can occur in a specific domain, and on how this form of exclusion interconnects with exclusion in the other domains.
- Identify innovative, and implementable, policy and practice for reducing exclusion in specific domains from across European and international jurisdictions, and establish current international best-practice.
As disentangling causal relationships across domains is a primary focus of ROSEnet, linking the activities of the WGs is key to the success and effectiveness of the Action. This has been factored into the design of the strategic plan of each WG and to the structure of the various activities and events and the four-year work programme.
Working Group Activities
- Link existing research projects involving WG members in terms of: dissemination of study findings within WGs; advising on the focus of study outputs; and encouraging secondary cross-national comparative analysis of existing findings.
- Foster collaborative writing amongst WG members for joint peer-review publications.
- Create an open and inclusive environment to foster inter-sector working between researchers and policy stakeholders, allowing for co-production of knowledge on specific exclusion domains.
- Encourage cross-fertilisation of ideas and knowledge across WGs, reflecting the interconnections between different domains of exclusion.
- Develop innovative mixed-methods and interdisciplinary methodologies for the study of exclusion in the specific domain.
- Build research capacity for the specific domain, ensuring a gender balance, recruiting new expert members and nurturing early-career investigators from COST and non-COST countries.
- Develop new research questions to inform new primary interdisciplinary research that will address the Action’s primary research tasks.
Economic Working Group
This WG focuses on how older people can be excluded across economic dimensions, leading to deficient living standards and the lack of fulfilment of basic needs and diminished availability of other life opportunities. This domain encompasses age-related dimensions of such topics as: poverty; deprivation and material resources; income inequality, employment and pensions; life-course deprivation and poverty transitions; generational transmission of poverty and economic hardship; and measurement and indicator formulation.
Co-Leaders
Michal Myck,
Centre for Economic Analysis (CenEA), Poland.
E-mail: mmyck@cenea.org.pl
Jim Ogg,
Caisse nationale d'assurance, France.
E-mail: jim.ogg@cnav.fr
Social Relations Working Group
This WG focuses on how the social lives of older people, and how exclusion within this domain, can result in a lack of meaningful relationships and a sense of disconnection. This domain includes areas such as: social networks and support; loneliness and social isolation; social relationship quality; social opportunities; and the influence of life-course relations and population processes on social aspects of exclusion.
Co-Leaders
Marja Aartsen,
Norweigan Social Research, Norway.
E-mail: marja.Aartsen@nova.hioa.no
Vanessa Burholt,
Centre for Innovative Ageing, Swansea University, UK.
E-mail: v.burholt@swansea.ac.uk
Services Working Group
This WG focuses on how older people can be excluded from key service infrastructure, negatively affecting access and usage patterns and health and wellbeing. This domain involves topics such as: health and social care service infrastructure; transport and mobility; area-based service exclusion; general services; information and digital exclusion; housing provision; service retrenchment and restructuring; and risk individualisation.
Co-Leaders
Veerle Draulans,
University of Leuven, Belgium.
E-mail: veerle.draulans@soc.kuleuven.be
Giovanni Lamura,
INRCA - National Institute of Health and Science on Ageing, Italy.
E-mail: g.Lamura@inrca.it
Civic Exclusion Working Group
Combining civic participation and socio-cultural aspects of exclusion, this WG focuses on socio-political and symbolic elements of exclusion which can limit the power of older people and marginalise them from wider society. This domain encompasses age-related dimensions of topics such as: voting and political participation; civic activities; volunteering and community responsibility; citizenship; identity exclusion; symbolic and discourse exclusion; ageism and age discrimination; and the intersection of social categorisations (e.g. gender; age; ethnicity; sexuality) and socially constructed stigmatisation.
Co-Leaders
Ariela Lowenstein,
Center for Research & Study, Haifa University, Israel.
E-mail: ariela@research.haifa.ac.il
Sandra Torres,
Uppsala University, Sweden.
E-mail: sandra.torres@soc.uu.se
Community/Spatial Working Group
This WG focuses on how place, as a socio-spatial phenomenon, can shape older adults’ lives, both serving as another domain of age-related exclusion, and as a mediator of exclusion that can intensify or protect against exclusion in later life. This domain includes topics such as: social and relational aspects of place; place-based services, amenities and built environment; place socio-economic aspects; socio-political structures and place; place-based policy; crime; and how aspects of belonging and change processes can generate exclusion in contexts across the urban-rural continuum.
Co-Leaders
Lucie Vidovićová,
Masaryk University, Czech Republic.
E-mail: lucie.Vidovic@seznam.cz
Isabelle Tournier,
University of Luxemburg, Luxemburg.
E-mail: isabelle.tournier@uni.lu
