Dr George W. Leeson is Co-Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing at the University of Oxford and a Senior Research Fellow in Demography at the University of Oxford in the UK. Dr Leeson’s main research interests are in the socio-economic-demographic aspects of ageing populations, covering both demographic modelling of population development and the analysis of national and international data sets. He is responsible for the Global Ageing Survey carried out in three waves in more than 20 countries in Europe and is chair of the editorial board of Ageing Horizons and co-editor of the Journal of Population Ageing.

Ebbe Johansen is Vice-President of the Age-Platform Europe representing the organization DaneAge, an organization with 120 employees, 16,000 volunteers in 216 departments, and 714,000 individual members in Denmark. His voluntary engagement focuses on the EU work and the support of the programme for an Age Friendly Europe by 2020. Before his retirement, he pursued a 21-year career at IBM as well as additional years as a senior consultant and has been working in Zanzibar for two years for DANIDA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), establishing a new engineering education at the Mbweni Technical College.

Birgit Dahlke, Ph.D., is a guest professor for German literature at the Humboldt University Berlin, worked across Europe, in the US and currently collaborates with the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She has a strong research focus on literature & cultural history in the GDR, investigating East-Western remembrance topography patterns, exploring types of emancipation, resistance, youth, realism, change, alienation, heritage and generation in the context of socio-historical analysis. Another focus lies on interdependencies of age, social background, ‘race’ and gender in German literature as well as generation as social order and political instrument. 

Alin Gavreliuc teaches psychology and is also Dean of WUT (West University Timisoara) in the Faculty of Sociology and Psychology. He has made major contributions in the areas of social psychology and ethnopsychology and created the first Romanian theses on intercultural psychology. His research fields include social identity and intergenerational patterns of values and attitudes, amongst many others. He is the President of the Psychosociology Section of the Romanian Society of Sociologists and is an acting member of the Supervisory Board for the Mentality project.

Stuart Kandell, Ph.D., has been called a “pioneer of creative ageing.” He founded and directed Stagebridge from 1978 to 2014, the oldest and most well-known senior theatre in the United States, which developed to become a model of arts and ageing. Kandell is a founding board member of the National Center for Creative Aging. With Artful Aging, he travels the world helping organizations, theatres, and senior groups incorporate the arts with older adults. 

Rob Drummer is a dramaturge, writer and director and works at the Bush Theatre in London, where he leads on all new writing activities, such as playwright discovery and development, commissioning and production dramaturgy, whilst supporting the artistic policies of the organization. Amongst many other activities, Rob is also an Associated Artist with the Company of Angels and an Artistic Advisory Panel Member for Only Connect, a creative criminal justice charity, rooted in community-based work.