The Age and Generations Network (AGENET) was formed in 2018 with the aim to enhance the presence of anthropology in research on ageing, generations, and the life course. These topics not only influence the fabrics of social relations, social policies, and health, but are also linked to emerging concerns in areas like migration, new technology, and climate change. The ability to understand these global transformations requires the kind of holistic, comparative, and empirically grounded theory at which anthropology excels. In placing age and generations at the centre of analyses of social life, our work reconsiders the diversity of roles people of all ages occupy; the different forms of agency and political power they wield; the intersections of age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and socio-economic positioning across the life course; the changing and multiple social roles of older people within families, communities, and other social groups across different societies.
AGENET’s main activities include the facilitation of thematic panels during biennial conferences of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) as well as the organisation of lecture series and workshops in non-conference years. You can find a list of past events and further details on the conferences page and using the dropdown menu.
Since 2021, together with the Association for Anthropology, Gerontology and the Life Course (AAGE) and the Visual Anthropology Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (VANEASA), AGENET grants the AVA Best Visual Ethnographic Material Award Addressing Aging and the Life Course. The call for entries is published on our website and best works are displayed in our online exhibition. Furthermore, several pages of our website display artwork created by visual anthropologist and ageing researcher, Laura Haapio-Kirk.
AGENET 