Our People

Tine Buffel is Professor of Sociology and Social Gerontology at The University of Manchester. She has published widely in the field of ageing, with a particular focus on social and environmental issues associated with ageing populations. Her research career has been distinguished by a commitment to working with community partnerships to study and address equity and social justice issues.

Patty is a Research Associate based in the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research at The University of Manchester. Patty’s research focuses on ageing, inequalities, social support and the life course, using mixed methods to address complex research questions.

Chris is Professor of Sociology and Social Gerontology in the School of Social Sciences at The University of Manchester. He is a former President of the British Society of Gerontology and is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America.

Amy is a Social and Cultural Geographer, motivated by critical questions concerning social inclusion, urban futures and the lived dimensions of place. She uses non-representational theories, focusing on theories of affect, and drawing on participatory and arts-based methods.

Sarah is PhD researcher at Manchester School of Architecture (MSA), funded by the Leverhulme Trust, and a Lead Analyst on the Ageing in Place Pathfinder project working for GMCA/MSA. Her PhD research works in the context of a large redevelopment project in North Manchester, using participatory action research and social network mapping methods to facilitate engagement with local older people.

MaoHui Deng is a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Manchester. He is interested in the interdisciplinary conversations between cinema, ageing and dementia, and he ties these different discourses through the examination of time. He is currently working on a project on dementia and modernity.

Dr Elaine Dewhurst is a Senior Lecturer in Law and Senior Expert on Age for the European Equality Law Network. Elaine is an expert in age equality law and has published extensively in this field. She is a co-lead researcher on the award-winning Uncertain Futures project which has addressed inequalities facing women over 50 in Manchester with respect to work.

James Fletcher is a Wellcome Trust Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester. He is currently researching environmental effects on cognition among older people diagnosed with dementia, drawing on a range of creative methods. His research interests span ageing, mental health and care.

Mhorag is a Qualitative Researcher in health services, with a background in health information systems. She has a particular interest in Actor-network theory, ethnographic methods, participatory research and digital exclusion.

Mark is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester School of Architecture. His research explores participatory design approaches to age-friendly neighbourhoods and older peoples' cohousing. He is working part-time with the GM Ageing Hub, developing strategies and guidance around housing and ageing for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

Tess is currently undertaking her PhD at the University of Manchester which explores how urban environments can support healthy ageing for older refugees and asylum seekers. With qualitative research methods such as life-story interviews, she is conducting fieldwork in both Manchester and Brussels. Previously, Tess has worked at the University of Chichester as a research assistant, contributing to the evaluation of the SHIFT (sexual health in the over 45s) project, following the completion of her MSc in Global Health at Maastricht University, Netherlands.

Dr Dharmi Kapadia is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and a longstanding member of the ESRC Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE), the UK’s largest research centre on ethnic inequalities. She is co-investigator of The Nuffield Foundation funded project ‘Ethnic inequalities in later life’ and co-investigator of the Covid Racial Inequalities in a Time of Crisis project funded by the ESRC, where she was work package lead for examining the impact of racism over the life course for ethnic minority older people.

Niamh Kavanagh is a Postdoctoral Researcher working on a project entitled 'Co-creating age-friendly housing: a collaborative research approach to improving the experience of ageing in place'. Niamh completed her PhD in Sociology (UoM) in July 2022, which explored working-class experiences of urban displacement in Salford. Her research interests span the urban, including redevelopment/gentrification, displacement, materiality, social housing, demolition, focusing on class and social injustices for marginalised groups.

Luciana Lang is an urban anthropologist and Research Associate based in the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing (MICRA). Her research interests include age-friendly cities, natural and cultural heritage, and community use of shared spaces. She is currently looking at how faith organizations support the age-friendly agenda in Greater Manchester. Her current work investigates how older people are using, shaping, and participating in faith spaces.

Alan researches the implications of an ageing population for housing design, exploring how older occupants’ health, wellbeing and independence can be enhanced through appropriate design. Also exploring how architects construct and script user representations of older occupants into housing design.

Camilla completed a PhD in social anthropology at the University of Manchester in 2014. Her research centres on the themes of urban change, inequalities, ageing, housing, belonging and community with a strong methodological focus, spanning a variety of ethnographic, sensory as well as longitudinal approaches. Camilla’s publications have provided theoretical analyses on the everyday experiences of inequalities in urban environments and also practical suggestions for how to tackle marginalisation in socially excluded groups.

Since 2016 Paul McGarry has been the Head of the Greater Manchester Ageing Hub, and now Assistant Director of Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s Public Service Reform Directorate.

Paul has worked in local government since 1993, working on ageing projects since 1997, setting up the Age Friendly Manchester Programme at Manchester City Council in 2009. Paul was a founding member of both the WHO’s Global Network and the UK Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities.

Paul is a research fellow at the University of Manchester.

Beth is the Ageing Well Programme Manager at the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, as part of the GM Ageing Hub. Her role very much involves influencing the health and care system to look at system re-design to enable older people in Greater Manchester to age well in place. Some of the key thematic areas which Beth leads on are the development and implementation of the Greater Manchester Falls collaborative, mental health, physical activity, and women's health.

Linda Naughton is a research fellow on the Ageing in Place in Cities project in the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester. Her background is in Human Geography and her research interests include geographies of ageing, narratives of city development, creative/spatial methodologies and Utopian Studies.

James Nazroo is a Professor of Sociology at The University of Manchester, Fellow of the British Academy and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. His research work examines inequalities in later life, with a particular focus on social class and ethnicity. He has published widely in these fields, examining a range of outcomes. He was a member of the team that established the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and is a co-PI of that study.

Joana is a Visual Anthropology graduate from the University of Manchester and is currently undertaking a PhD. Using audio-visual methods, she investigates how older people living on a low-income and from marginalised communities collectively organise to resist gentrification and reclaim the urban commons in their neighbourhoods in Manchester and Brussels.

Miriam is a sociology graduate from the University of Manchester and is currently undertaking her PhD, which explores how the social relationships and experiences of place may be particularly compromised for geographically dispersed ethnically minoritised communities. More specifically, the older Chinese community in the UK. Her research interests include ethnicity, ageing in place, life course perspectives, geographical dispersion, a community structures.

Marion Vannier is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Manchester. Her research and publications focus on life imprisonment and prison more generally.

She is currently working on a project on hope amongst elderly life-sentenced prisoners in the UK funded by the UKRI Future Leaders’ scheme.

Sandaru is a PhD candidate at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and a Lead Analyst on the Ageing in Place Pathfinder project led by Greater Manchester Combined Authority working with Manchester School of Architecture. Her PhD research focuses on using virtual reality as a novel method to explore momentary and context-specific nature of the fear of crime. Her research interests span urban studies, environmental criminology, urban ageing, focusing on spatio-temporal variations in people’s perceptions as and when they navigate urban spaces.

Stefan is an Architect, researching and practicing the architecture and urbanism of social and environmental sustainability. Stefan is Co-director of the Place-Health Architecture Space Environment research and delivery group, in the Manchester School of Architecture.

Sophie is a Researcher at the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing. Her background is in human geography and sociology, and research is around age-friendly communities, social infrastructure, community organisations and local attachments.

Jingwen is a a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester, focusing on rural-urban migration, gender and health in later life in China from a life course perspective. She is interested in life course theory, gender, social determinants of health and longitudinal data analysis.

Nan’s research centres around the social and environmental impact of urbanisation and health inequality in later life in the Global South, with a particular reference to China.

Wilbert is an urban geographer with a core interest in active mobility, ageing and urban sustainability. He works on the MSCA-project ENTOURAGE which combines mobilities, ageing and tourism studies to investigate urban mobility transformations in tourist cities and their effects on the inclusion of older residents and tourists.

Rebecca is the Learning Officer for the UK Network of Age-Friendly Communities, facilitated by the Centre for Ageing Better. In her role, she works to inspire, connect and support members of the UK Network of Age-friendly Communities, a growing UK movement affiliated to the World Health Organisation.

Sarah is the Evidence Manager for the Research, Impact and Voice team at the Centre for Ageing Better. Previously she worked as Equalities Research Coordinator at Ambition for Ageing, a large programme funded by the National Lottery Community Fund which aimed to create more age friendly places and reduce social isolation across Greater Manchester. She is interested in equality in ageing, communities of identity, coproduction, and the role of the community, voluntary and social enterprise sector in empowering older people.

Natalie completed a PhD in Sociology at the University of Manchester in 2022.

She is a researcher with interests in healthy ageing, reducing health inequalities, and developing and implementing co-research methodologies.

Since completing her PhD, she has held research positions at the University of Cumbria and Lancaster University. She is currently a Senior Research Associate based within the Division of Health at Lancaster University and is working on a project titled: ‘Living and Dying in Care Homes during the COVID-19 pandemic: what worked well and why?’

Hayley James is Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Personal Financial Wellbeing at Aston Business School. She completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Manchester on pension decision-making practices, supervised by Professor Debora Price and Professor Tine Buffel. Hayley’s research interests concern sociological perspectives on money, finance and value, and how they intersect with ageing and the lifecourse, using qualitative research methods to understand complex personal experiences.