MA student Kelly Leonard wins prize for research poster

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On March 16, 2017, Kelly Leonard, ACT Research Assistant and MA Student at Concordia University, presented a research poster as part of Concordia’s Individualized Program Research Day. Leonard’s poster, entitled “Practitioners’ perspective on Computer and Tablet Use in Therapeutic Recreation Practice,” was was awarded second place for best poster in the MA Student category. Leonard’s poster, available here, features research from her ACT-funded project “Bringing the Community to You!“.

End of fieldwork for Smartwatches, adoption(s) and appropriation(s)

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The team for the ACT-funded research project Smartwatches, adoption(s) and appropriations(s) has recently completed one year of fieldwork.

The fieldwork extended from Winter 2015/16 to  Winter 2016/17. During this amazing period we conducted bi.monthly semi-structured interviews with participants, and performed a usability test. Interviews were recorded and transcribed and we are now analyzing them to bring the results into discussion in conferences, and to publish journal articles.

The project involved nine participants: five in Barcelona (three women, two men), four in Rome (one woman, three men). With ages between 65 and 80 at the beginning of the study, the average age was 71.1 years old. We provided participants with a smartwatch: they could choose from among the Moto G 360 models available on the market during the recruitment process.

The project is led by ACT co-applicant Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol of Open University of Catalonia’s (OUC) IN3 in Barcelona, and includes other ACT members Francesca Comunello of Lumsa University in Rome, Simone Mulargia of Sapienza University of Rome and Núria Ferran-Ferrer of OUC.

Postdoctoral Fellowship at Concordia University on “The Politics of Social Gerontology in Asian Post-Industrialised Societies”

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The Concordia University Research Chair in Aging and Public Policy is seeking candidates for a postdoctoral fellow position to conduct research on “The Politics of Social Gerontology in Asian Post-Industrialized Societies.” The selected candidate will work with ACT Collaborator Patrik Marier, as well as Meghan Joy at Concordia University. Applications are due April 1, and the complete call for applicants is available on the Concordia University website.

ACT members on CKUT radio in Montreal

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ACT members will be alongside partners Respecting Elders Communities against Abuse (RECAA) on the Older Women Live (OWL) radio programme on CKUT in Montreal. They will discuss the recent food blog project, and will talk about the longstanding collaboration between ACT and RECAA that spans creative and research projects. Listen in on Wednesday, March 8 at 6pm on CKUT (90.3) in Montreal.

Ageing (Wo)Men and their World

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Ageing (Wo)Men and their World will showcase the cross-cultural complexity of the ageing experience through a medley of still and moving images of elders in Montreal. It is a response to the limited (and often, white) representations of ageing in popular culture. The exhibition’s theme is guided by a remix of Nuit Blanche’s Expo theme—the Man and his World.
Ageing (Wo)Men and their World will demonstrate the enthusiastic and active world of elders in Montreal and the different projects that they do, specifically their relationship to and with technology. Examples include: images of women taking photos of each other, or of themselves; women working on a documentary about saris; elders using electronic music technology; and, elders in various Montreal public spaces together. The images and videos will be a mix of already existing imagery from ACT-related members and of new imagery that will be taken specifically for this exhibition and deal more specifically with the intersection of innovation, technology, and the Ageing (Wo)Men and their World.
The purpose is to catch the attention of spectators and those walking by or taking the bus on DoctorPenfield in order to make them re-consider the popular rhetoric of ageing and to contextualize the images.
The exhibition installation uses DIY techniques to mix new and old technologies to present image-based work. Nuit Blanche and it’s Expo 67 theme is the perfect festival to showcase this type of work. These methods also align with Concordia’s enthusiasm for the non-paradigmatic use of technologies and their potential to support critical thought. The Samuel Bronfman Building would be turned into a futuristic ‘pavilion’ with its windows turned into temporary screens.
From 6:00 pm – 1:00 am on Saturday, 4th March, spectators will be immersed in the world of Montreal residents moving in windows of the Samuel Bronfman ‘ACT Pavilion’.
This exhibition is funded by ACT and by the Social Science (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council).
The Curator of Ageing (Wo)Men and their World is Magdalena Olszanowski.

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Les aîné(e)s et leur monde

Pour Nuit blanche, l’édifice Samuel Bronfman de l’Université Concordia se transformera en un pavillon futuriste. Ses fenêtres seront utilisées comme écrans temporaires sur lesquels seront projetés des images représentant les complexités interculturelles du vieillissement L’exposition cherche à repenser les stéréotypes du vieillissement et des technologies et à rendre l’invisible visible.

New “ACT Lunch & Learn” speaker series at Concordia University featuring “Old, Crafty and Connected”

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The ACT project has launched a new “Lunch & Learn” series at Concordia. Each month, a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow is invited to present on their research. Colleagues provide feedback and ask questions in an informal setting. Everyone in the ACT community, from researchers to community partners, is invited to attend. The series kicked off in October 2016 and has been going strong since with monthly presentations and discussions.

This month, ACT-affiliated student and MA student in Media Studies at Concordia University, Nora Lamontagne, will present on her MA project Old, crafty and connected: The Cercle des fermières community in the age of digital networks. 

In her project, Nora’s seeks, first, to understand how the Fermières, as an intergenerational organization with a large membership that includes older women, have incorporated the use of the Internet and digital communications into their organization. Second, it looks to analyze how the incorporation of these digital, on-line platforms reshapes the sense of community present in this longstanding all-female institution.

Pack a lunch and join us in the ACT offices!

Monday, January 23, 2017
12:20-13:30
Samuel Bronfman Building, 4th floor
1590, ave. du Docteur Penfield, Montreal

ACT is accepting travel funding applications for the ENAS-NANAS conference in Graz

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ACT is accepting funding applications from ACT-affiliated researchers (namely co-applicants, collaborators and affiliated students) for the 2017 ENAS-NANAS meeting to be held at the University of Graz from April 27 to 30 2017. A limited number of partial funding travel grants, corresponding to the costs of air travel, will be made available. In such cases when solely train travel is preferred over a flight, train travel can be reimbursed. Those interested in applying for funding can do so by sending an email by February 5, 2017 to “application (at) actproject (dot) ca”. Those who apply should be able and willing to book their flight through ACT by February 24, 2017.

In this application email, please include.

  1. Your name and affiliation
  2. Provide the title of the presentation and the abstract that was submitted and accepted to the 2017 ENAS-NANAS conference
  3. If you are presenting as part of an organized panel, please send the title of the panel and the names of the other panel members.
  4. If you have been previously funded for travel by ACT, include the date (month and year) of the last time you were funded (excluding ACT annual meetings).
  5. Provide all the information we need to book your flight (your departure and arrival dates, cities of arrival and departure, your full name as stated on your passport, your date of birth, and your phone number). You will be consulted before the booking takes place and will get a chance to review the flight.
  6. If you are a ACT-affiliated student or postdoctoral fellow, please include a letter from the sponsoring ACT member (collaborator or co-applicant) or, alternatively, the sponsoring ACT member can send an email to the appropriate email address by the deadline. This letter or email should simply and clearly state that the senior researcher supports the student or postdoctoral fellow’s request for funding.

Postdoctoral fellowship/s: Human-Computer Interaction and older people

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stunning lifestyle imagery for modern creatives... check out another scenery / perspective

The Interactive Technologies Group (http://gti.upf.edu/) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF, Barcelona) is looking for and willing to support excellent postdoctoral Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers who are interested in applying for a Beatriu de Pinós (BP) 2016 fellowship so as to conduct a two-year postdoc in the area of HCI and Ageing at a top Spanish university. The candidate/s will be supervised by Prof. Dr. Josep Blat (UPF) and Dr. Sergio Sayago (Universitat de Barcelona).

The purpose of the Beatriu de Pinós programme* is to award 60 individuals grants for the hiring and incorporation of postdoctoral research staff into the Catalan science and technology system. These grants are designed for the incorporation of young researchers (who obtained their PhD between 2007 and 2014 and have not resided or worked in Spain for more than 12 months in the three years prior to date of submission of the application), so that they can improve their professional prospects and obtain an independent research position. Candidates must carry out a research and training project for the entire period of the grant, one that will allow them to progress in the development of their professional careers. Please check the website of the BP programme for further information about procedures, deadlines, and requirements.

The Interactive Technologies Group (GTI) is a research group within the Information and Communication Technologies Engineering Department(https://portal.upf.edu/web/etic/home) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (http://upf.edu). The GTI focuses on human aspects and technology, especially those related to enhancing people’s use of computer technologies. The GTI has been conducting research in the field of HCI and older people (http://gti.upf.edu/digital-inclusion/) over slightly more than a decade (starting in 2004). Four PhD dissertations in the field of HCI and older people have been successfully completed over this period of time. Our research tends to focus on the human aspects of HCI, adopting a strong ethnographic / participant observational approach. Previous research included Web Accessibility and Computer-Mediated Communication. Our current research aims to understand better HCI research and design with, and for, older people, by exploring, for instance, digital games, Embodied Conversational Agents, everyday emotional digital experiences, wearable computing, PD and DIY.

ACT at the Canadian Association of Gerontology Conference in Montreal

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ACT researchers will present as part of a panel titled Ageing, Communication, Technologies: Experiencing a digital world in later life at the upcoming conference of the Canadian Association of Gerontology (CAG) to be held in Montreal from October 20 to 22. The ACT panel will take place on October 22 at 3:15pm.

The panel employs and explores a variety of methodologies to broach the study of old age, media and technologies in manners that reveal the heterogeneity of life courses and the multiple ways one can age with and through technologies. In “Media portrayal of grandparents,”, Shannon Hebblethwaite, Linda Quirke and Kelly Leonard  critically examine how old age, grandparents, and their engagements with technologies can be normatively represented in some media discourses. Then, we move to challenging these representations, drawing from interviews, and participatory and creative approaches to probe engagements between seniors and media. In “Living with media,” Kim Sawchuk explores the variegated digital practices of elders gleaned from interviews with octogenerians. Through the seniors’ “technobiographies,” Sawchuk challenges the simplistic binary of use and non-use. In a similar way, Kate de Medeiros draws from an autobiographical writing workshop for older adults to examine the importance of the processes of telling and listening as part of “Applied narrative gerontology”. Finally, Giuliana Cucinelli, Ann-Louise Davidson and Margarida Romero further delve into the potentialities of collaborative learning and play. In their presentation of “Participatory game design in intergenerational contexts,” they explain how the creative and intergenerational design of a game can work to challenge perceptions of seniors on technologies. Along with the panel, the ACT will co-host a kiosk with the research group VIES from October 20 to 22nd.

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Ageing, Communication, Technologies: Experiencing a digital world in later life

Shannon Hebblethwaite, Concordia University; Linda Quirke, Wilfrid Laurier University and Kelly Leonard, Concordia University
“Media portrayal of grandparents: ‘Wise, white haired miracle makers’ or ‘Critics’?”

Kim Sawchuk, Concordia University
Living with media:  octogenarians, technobiographies and communicating digital “use and non-use”

Giuliana Cucinelli, Concordia University; Ann-Louise Davidson, Concordia University & Margarida Romero, Université Laval
Participatory game design in intergenerational contexts: Co-designing digital games for intergenerational learning using Scratch

Kate de Medeiros, Miami University, USA

Applied narrative gerontology: A case study on listening and the power of being heard