***apologies for cross-posting*** / few days to submit an abstract

Dear all,

We invite you to submit an abstract to our track Dis-entangling later life:
ageing processes, innovative practices and critical reflections – at the* 8th
STS Italia Conference “Dis/Entangling Technoscience: Vulnerability,
Responsibility and Justice* (www.stsitaliaconf2020.com), June 17-19, 2021,
Trieste, Italy.

Convenors:
Silvia Fornasini, University of Trento and Fondazione Bruno Kessler,
[log in to unmask]
Francesco Miele, University of Padova, [log in to unmask]
Francisco Nunes, Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS, [log in to unmask]


*(Track 4) Dis-entangling later life: ageing processes, innovative
practices and critical reflections*
The ageing population topic is becoming increasingly salient in the
international and European agenda. The increasing number of older people in
society is rarely framed as a positive feat, but rather as a challenge with
great social impact. In this context, research and development are seen as
the key to “solving” the challenges and impacts of the demographic ageing
by creating innovative social and care processes where older person use
technology to help them engage in self-care and wellbeing. The active
agency expected from older people contrasts with previous held perspectives
on them. In fact, for a long time they were seen as passive subjects that
created a social and economic burden for our societies, as Mort et al.
(2013) describe in their article: “Ageing with telecare: care or coercion
in austerity?”. This approach overlooks the fact that the nature of later
life and its relationship with science and technology is changing: in their
work “Science, technology and the ‘grand challenge’ of ageing -
Understanding the socio-material constitution of later life”, Peine et al.
(2015) describe how current generations of older persons have experienced
different waves of technology innovations during their life course, and
they are increasingly used to adopt technology as part of their daily life,
finding new social roles and identities. Furthermore, as stated by Kogan et
al. (2016) in their literature review “Person‐centered care for older
adults with chronic conditions and functional impairment”, in the case of
non self-sufficient older people, institutions and caregivers are more and
more interested in technological and organizational interventions aimed at
providing the so-called person-centered care.

STS have been contributing to challenge the assumptions according to which
elderlies are passive subjects, exploring what it means to grow old with
techno-scientific innovations as part of everyday life. From this
perspective, older persons are agents that create and develop meaning for
later life as they interact with new technologies, incorporating it into
their daily life and adapting it to their needs and desires. Moreover,
elderlies contribute at re-defining social representations concerning aging
and at supporting the emergence of scientific innovations (Vincent, 2006,
“Ageing contested: Anti-ageing science and the cultural construction of old
age”). STS foster a new paradigm, which takes into account the increasing
heterogeneity of older people and other actors who are involved in the
co-production of new technologies and, more broadly, of techno-scientific
innovations. The aim of this track is to highlight the intricate ways in
which older persons themselves - as well as family members, peers,
caregivers, healthcare organizations and media - articulate and reconstruct
understandings about later life through active engagements with
technoscientific objects. Starting from this understanding of ageing, we
intend to attract theoretically, empirically, and/or methodologically
oriented contributes focused on:
●      Technology, active-ageing and empowerment of older people;
●      Participatory design practices and older people;
●      Technology and chronic disease management at home;
●      Technology and care practices in long-term care organizations;
●      Research on ageing processes;
●      Media discourses on ageing and techno-scientific innovations.


*To participate:*Abstracts (written in English, or in Italian) should be
submitted by December 18th to the conference email address (
[log in to unmask]) and to the emails of convenors' selected track and
should include:
1. Author’s name and surname, affiliation and email address
2. Presentation title
3. Abstract (less than 300 words)

Best wishes,
Silvia, Francesco & Francisco

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