How to live to 100 and tell people about it!

CPC is set to showcase its highly successful ‘How to get to 100’ exhibition on the international stage, as today marks the start of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Washington DC.

The event, which will see over 10,000 visitors pass through in the next four days, brings together a community of leading scientists, educators, policymakers, and journalists to discuss cutting-edge developments in science, technology, and policy. There will be more than 120 scientific sessions, plenary and topical lectures, flash talk sessions, e-poster presentations, and an international exhibit hall, where CPC will be inviting people to explore how our early years, lifestyle, work and where we live can affect our lifespan.

CPC's exhibit, chosen to represent ESRC-funded investment, will sit alongside exhibits from EPSRC and NERC as an example of great research from the UK. Research featured in the exhibition brings together knowledge from across disciplinary boundaries including demographers, economists, gerontologists, statisticians, geographers, sociologists who have worked together to find solutions to societal challenges on population change. Fittingly, the meeting theme is ‘Science Transcending Boundaries’.

Teresa McGowan, CPC's Research Manager, is accompanying the exhibition to Washington DC, and was invited by the ESRC to write a blog post, 'How to live to 100 and tell people about it!', about the difficulties facing social scientists in communicating their research in a hands-on way. In the post, she explains how CPC has been using the exhibition to allow people to think more deeply about population change:

"We use the exhibition as a tool to open up conversations between researchers and the public, and in turn people can use the free app as a talking point with others. We hope that visitors leave the exhibition with a better understanding of the issues around population change, and curiosity to find out more in the future."

The project to develop and promote the exhibition across Europe has been led by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany since 2013. In conjunction with Population Europe – a network of leading European experts specialising in communicating demographic knowledge to a wider public– the Centre for Population Change has taken the lead in bringing the exhibition to the UK, and now the US, creating content specifically for audiences in the regions it visits. Find out more about the project on the 'How to get to 100 - and enjoy it' website.

The AAAS meeting runs from 14-17 February 2019 and you can keep up to date by following follow the action on Twitter at #AAASmtg.

Posted 14/02/2019 08:55