What is your role within ARK? 

I research ageing and older people and so have been working on the ARK ageing programme since I joined Queen’s University Belfast in 2014. The work that ARK has done has led to a lot of brilliant projects across both our universities and beyond. For instance, the Lively Project used objects to tell the story of older people’s lives. That project led to a PhD research project by Angel Leira Pernas who is now Research and Policy Officer at the Commissioner for Older People, Northern Ireland.

What do you most enjoy about your role in ARK?

My favourite thing about ARK is my colleagues – especially being able to work across our two universities. Right now, I working on a project investigating Ireland’s Housewife of the Year, a competition for married women which ran from 1967 to 1995. This work would not be possible without the support of my ARK colleagues who are always the first to support interdisciplinary work.

As a Reader in Social Policy and Ageing, what is the focus of your research?

I love the way research on ageing has really taken off over the past decade. We now have so many fantastic people working to better understand ageing and older people in Northern Ireland. My work has often been with colleagues from Arts, Humanities as well as medicine and life sciences through the NICOLA project. At the moment I am leading Queen’s on Ageing a research network of gerontology nerds based in Queen’s University Belfast and beyond. We also have a doctoral training programme with Dunhill Medical Trust and a University of Southern California partnership – both are collaborations with the Faculty for Medical Health and Life Sciences.

Find out more about Dr Carney’s work: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/gemma-carney