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This new edited collection originated from a research seminar series funded by the British Psychological Society in 2014 – the idea being to showcase a wide variety of psychological approaches to ageing. Having run a series of three successful seminars (1) in 2015-2016, bringing together academics, practitioners and various older people, including people with dementia (Peel et al., 2016) we produced a journal special (2)(Murray et al., 2017), focusing especially on policy and practice. (2)

Psychologies of Ageing (3) is the culmination of this experiment in bringing different forms of psychological knowledge to bear on the lives and experiences of older people (Peel et al., 2018). We deliberately, and unapologetically, used psychologies plural to actively signal the wide range of social, critical, cognitive, biological, health, community and political psychology perspectives adopted when researchers and practitioners focus on the topic of ageing.

We were privileged to meet dementia advocate and author Dr Christine Bryden (4) at our Ageing in Context seminar in May 2015 and she kindly agreed then to write a personal forward to the Psychologies of Ageing book. Christine’s foreword, alongside a chapter focusing exclusively on healthy lifestyle to reduce the risk of dementia, offer a specific lens on dementia; but we hope wider topics such as empathy in palliative care interactions, and resisting negative social representations of ageing will also appeal. I thoroughly enjoyed the collaborative process of crafting this new book, which hopefully will impact the diversity and scope of research and teaching on ageing within the discipline of psychology and beyond.

Notes

1. https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-29/april/exploring-psychologies-ageing

2. https://www.emeraldinsight.com/toc/wwop/21/1

3. https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9783319970332

4. https://www.christinebryden.com/

Further reading

Murray, M., Holland, C.A. & Peel, E. (2017) Introduction: Psychologies of Ageing: Research, policy and practice. Working with Older People, 21(1), 1-3. (https://www.emeraldinsight.com/toc/wwop/21/1)

Peel, E., Holland, C.A. & Murray, M. (2018) Psychologies of Ageing: Theory, research and practice. London: Palgrave Macmillan. (https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9783319970332)

Peel, E., Holland, C.A. & Murray, M. (2016) Exploring psychologies of ageing. The Psychologist, 29(4), 14-15. (https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-29/april/exploring-psychologies-ageing)