Victoria University to host conference on ageing

Victoria University is to host a conference on ageing on 31 August and 1 September this year.

The Hon. Lianne Dalziel, Minister for Senior Citizens, is to give the opening address, and a range of international and New Zealand experts will speak on topics ranging from heath care in New Zealand to ageing in rural areas, relationships between generations and even ageing in ancient times.

Victoria University Psychology Professor Sik Hung Ng says the conference, which will build on successful conferences in 1996 and 1998, aims to promote understanding of ageing and inter-generational relations in New Zealand.

Keynote speakers include Charles Carter, of Age Concern UK, who will speak on the millennium debate on the age, and Neena Chappell, Director of the Centre on Ageing at the University of Victoria in Canada, who will talk about the role social support has to play in positive ageing and intergenerational relations.

Tim Parkin, a Victoria University graduate, Rhodes Scholar and Chair of Classics at the University of Canterbury, is to speak on ageing in ancient times. Dr Parkin wrote his Oxford D.Phil, which was awarded in 1992, on ageing and the aged in the ancient Roman world.

Margaret Steinberg, Director of the Healthy Ageing Research Unit at the University of Queensland, is to speak on diversity and ageing in rural areas. Dr Steinberg is a former senior Australian public servant and was appointed Queensland Commissioner for Ageing.

Other speakers include key figures from government and non-government organisations such as Colin Blair, New Zealand’s Retirement Commissioner; Dr Margaret Guthrie, President of Age Concern New Zealand and Wellington branch NZ Association of Gerontology, and Claire Austin, CEO of Age Concern New Zealand, researchers, analysts, and older people themselves.

The conference, “Learning from the past, looking to the future: ageing and intergenerational relations in a new millennium”, will be held at Victoria University’s Law School in the historic Old Government Buildings, 15 Lambton Quay, Wellington.

The conference is sponsored by TOWER, through the Victoria University Foundation; Age Concern New Zealand; the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, and Victoria University of Wellington. It has been organised by the schools of Psychology and Maori Studies at Victoria University.

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