International Centre For Lifecourse Studies In Society and Health

New

* December 3: Active Transport Policy Seminar

* October 29: A Good Start in Life - UCL / ICLS Lunch time Lecture

* Sept 2 - 6: Summer School on Longitudinal & Life Course Research

*  'Life gets under your skin' available free to download


Events / News 

2013

  • December: The next NatCen/ESRC/ICLS policy seminar will be on the topic of  Active Transport (working title). The seminar is scheduled to take place in early December. More details will be available closer to the event.
  • September 2 - 6: The  3rd Longitudinal and Life Course Research Summer School for postgraduate research students and post-doctoral fellows will be held at Oxford University this year. Closing date for application Friday, 14 April 2013.
  • June 18: ICLS 23rd Centre Day. A full programme will be available soon.
  • April 23: ICLS 22nd Centre Day -  Programme.
  • April 17: Light drinking during pregnancy is not linked to adverse behavioural or cognitive outcomes in childhood, suggests a  ICLS research paper published today in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.This study collated data from the Millennium Cohort Study, a national study of infants born in the UK between 2000-2002, to assess whether light drinking (up to two units of alcohol per week) in pregnancy was linked to unfavourable developmental outcomes in 7-year-old children.  Professor Yvonne Kelly, ICLS Deputy Director at UCLand co-author of the study said:“There appears to be no increased risk of negative impacts of light drinking in pregnancy on behavioural or cognitive development in 7-year-old children.“We need to understand more about how children’s environments influence their behavioural and intellectual development. While we have followed these children for the first seven years of their lives, further research is needed to detect whether any adverse effects of low levels of alcohol consumption in pregnancy emerge later in childhood.”  Full BJOG Press Release.
  • April 8 - May 1: Applications invited for the ICLS post of  Research Associate in Lifecourse Epidemiology. Go to the UCL jobs vacancies website for an application form quoting Ref:1321478.
  • March 13: Unemployment Recession and Health Policy Seminar.  This seminar will look at health effects of the transition from secure to insecure employment, long term effects of parental and youth unemployment, and potential resilience to unemployment. This policy seminar is open to those from the governmental and third sectors involved in policy making. The seminar will be chaired by Richard Bartholomew, Chief Research Officer, Children, Young People and Families Directorate, Department for Education. Full details are available from the ICLS Policy Seminar pages.
  • February 15: The 21st Centre Day and the 1st Centre Day of the ICLS phase 2 will consist of presentations from the five projects scheduled to commence in 2013, followed by briefings of the management and running of the second phase of ICLS.

2012

  • November 6: ICLS is releasing (ESRC Press Release) a plain English guide to their research demonstrating how ‘Life gets under your skin’ as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science in November 2012. The booklet demonstrates how social policy related to family life, education, employment and welfare can have beneficial effects for the overall health of  individuals. It also shows how multi disciplinary, longitudinal research can deliver findings valuable to the individual, society and the economy. Copies of the publication can be downloaded from this site from Tuesday 6 November 2012.
  • November 7: ESRC Festival of Scoial Science. 'What a life; social circumstances and health'. This half day event for lower sixth-form students will explore how social organisation effects human biology and why this is important for health. Through presentations and electronic voting different phases of the Lifecourse will be explored.  For more information Email: icls[AT] ucl.ac.uk or visit the ESRC Festival website.
  • October 22 - 23: ICLS mid term conference. Goodenough College, London
  • May 2: NatCen/ESRC/ICLS Wellbeing Policy Seminar. Four short papers, shedding light on the role that well-being can play in the process of intervention development and implementation. The two session will be chaired by Richard Bartholomew, Chief Research Officer, Children, Young People and Families Directorate, Department for Education.
  • April 16: Innovative Data Collection Methods in Ageing Studies , UCL  The final seminar in a series of 4 on the methodological challenges facing ageing cohort studies. See http://www.methods.manchester.ac.uk/ageingcohort/ for full details of all 4 seminars.
  • March 8: Public Lecture - Having it all - dispelling the myths about work and motherhood by Dr Anne McMunn. We hear a lot about the stresses of juggling motherhood with paid work, and the subsequent harm this might cause children. However, this UCL Lunch time lecture (LtL) to mark International Women’s Day discusses evidence from UK cohort studies following generations of men and women which suggests that working mothers not only end up healthier in mid-life, but that their daughters may also end up happier too. This public lecture will also be webcasted for those unable to make the date or attend the Central London location.
  • February 27: 1 - 2pm. Public Lecture for UCL Diversity Month: Is it worse to be young now than in the swinging 60s? Professor Mel Bartley, Director of UCL's International Centre For Lifecourse Studies and Lidia Panico, Postdoctoral Fellow, LSE Gender Institute and UCL Research Student Cruciform Building, Lecture Theatre 2, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT.
  • February 16 : The extended lifespan. Is it in our best interests?  Darwin Lecture Theatre (B40), Darwin Building, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT Time: 6-7.30pm. This public discussion will draw out the various impacts of an extended lifespan. It is noted that the life span of someone born in 2011 could easily be 100 years in some societies, yet below 40 years in others. As our life expectancy grows, how will we cope with continual degradation of our dexterity, eyesight or mental capacity? Is such degradation inevitability? How reduced can our functional performance become before we have to contend with life-changing impacts? How will our health system cope? How will an ageing population erode tax revenues and how will future generations be affected? As we live longer, will we live with disease and disability for longer?  Ageing is not only about the extending of lifespan at the ‘older end’. The increased ageing of relatively small groups, such as people with Downs syndrome and cerebral palsy, who in the past had relatively short lifespans, but are now living longer – possibly beyond the lifespan of their parent-carers. How should these groups, who are often not included in the ‘ageing debate’, be integrated into wider society? Register for this event. Speakers include Mel Bartley, Professor of Medical Sociology, UCL Epidemiology and Public Health. Director, ESRC Centre for Life Course Studies in Society and Health, Malcolm Grant, Provost, UCL. Chair, NHS Commissioning Board, Sally Greengross, Chief Executive, International Longevity Centre-UK. Chair, All-Party Parliamentary Groups: Dementia, Corporate Social Responsibility, Intergenerational Futures and Continence Care.
  • January 19:  UCL Research Department of Epidemiology & Public Health PhD Open Day. Discuss possible opportunities (2013) with Professor Mel Bartley, ICLS Director and Dr Anne McMunn, Graduate Tutor and ICLS project leader.
  • January: Noriko Cable, ICLS member and editor of SSM Newsletter  has been elected as one of two new members of the Society of Socail Medince (SSM) Committee.  Her term of office is from January 2012 to December 2014.

2011

  • December 6: NatCen/ICLS/ESRC Early Childhood Health & Development Policy Seminar for government, business and third sector organisations.
  • October 28 The Methodological Challenges of Cognitive Ageing, Nunn Hall, Institute of Education, London. One of a series of four seminars on methodological challenges facing ageing cohort studies which conclude with an International Conference. for details on the seminar series please see http://www.methods.manchester.ac.uk/ageingcohort/
  • September 13: Giving free bus passes to the elderly may help ward off obesity, indicates ICLS research  published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. For more information contact Dr Elizabeth Webb.
  • August 22: Job Vacancy: Research Assistant/Associate in Social Statistics. The Centre for Multilevel Modelling at the University of Bristol is seeking to appoint an applied statistician to work on a new ESRC-funded project, Longitudinal Effects, Multilevel Modelling and Applications (LEMMA 3). LEMMA 3 is one of six Nodes of the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM). The LEMMA 3 Node will focus on methods for the analysis of longitudinal data. See http://www.bris.ac.uk/boris/jobs/feeds/ads?ID=100571
  • July 22: Working mothers and the effects on children.
    Parents struggling to combine paid work with bringing up their children now have some positive news. A recent ICLS  study on maternal employment and child socio-emotional behaviour in the UK shows that there are no significant detrimental effects on a child’s social or emotional development if their mothers work during their early years. For more information.  See J Epidemiol Community Health 2011;jech.2010.109553Published Online First: 10 January 2011 doi:10.1136/jech.2010.109553 or contact the author Dr Anne McMunn.
  • July 7: Adult education and heart disease. Students who leave school without any qualifications can expect to suffer from  poorer health and greater risk of heart disease than those with some qualifications, according to research. However, the ICLS study 'Is adult education associated with reduced coronary heart disease risk?' suggests if people return to education later on in life, they may be able to reduce the health gap with their more educated peers. For more information please contact Professor Tarani Chandola, Manchester University.
  • June 13: New ICLS research published in Archives of Disease in Childhood shows that the children of the poorest families are 7 to 8 times more likely to exhibit serious social and emotional problems than their wealthy peers. The research also shows that the gap in children’s verbal (speaking/vocabulary) skills widens by 50% between the ages of three and five, the two age groups being looked at by the research team. For more information contact Professor Yvonne Kelly.
  • June 7: NatCen/ICLS/ESRC Work-Life Balance Policy Seminar
  • May: Breastfeeding and children’s behaviour: Professors Kelly and Sacker investigated a relationship between breastfeeding and children’s behaviour, using Millennium Cohort Study, along with researchers from Oxford and York University. Their finding, showing a long term association between exclusive breastfeeding and children’s well-adjusted behaviour, is published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood (doi:10.1136/adc.2010.201970). See also BBC News Health Online
  • April 20: Applicaiton Deadline: 2 ESRC PhD Studentships in Life Course Epidemiology.
  • July 4 - 8:  Longitudinal and Life Course Research Summer School Antwerp, Belgium. Supporting Organisations: Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, European Association of Population Studies, ESRC  International Centre for Lifecourse Studies in Society and Health, Centre for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, Anwerp. * This course is  NOW FULL - Please leave your details with the course organisers if you would like to be notified about the next LLCR Summer School.
  • March - Studentships in quantitive methods and social science available at ISER, University of Essex and University of Bristol. Apply NOW!
  • February 15: Transcripts of the presentations given at the NatCen /ICLS / ESRC policy seminar Unemployment, Recession and Health held on 7 December 2010 are now available. See ICLS Occasional Papers 5.1 - 5.5  

2010

  • December 7, 2  - 4pm. NatCen/ICLS/ESRC public policy seminar. Unemployment, Recession and Health. Programme and Abstract available. Chair: Richard Bartholomew, Chief Research OfficerChildren, Young People and Families Directorate, Department for Education. 
  • October 29, 9-10:30am: A new British Academy report,  'Stress at Work', written by our Centre member, Professor Chandola presented at the British Academy, British Academy, 10 Carlton Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH.
  • October 13 - 15 :The 5th Conference of Epidemiological Longitudinal Studies in Europe, Paphos, Cyprus. ICLS members presented their work. For further detail, please visit here.
  • October 4: ICLS organised a Grantsmanship seminar, lectured by Dr. Jacob Sweiry at the Haldane room, UCL. Catch up with his talk from here.
  • September 22 -24: Society for Longitudinal & Lifecourse Studies International Conference. Venue: Clare College, Cambridge. Keynote addresses by Karl Ulrich Mayer (Yale University), Carol Dezateux (Institute of Child Health, UCL), and Bren Neal (University of Leeds). ICLS members presented their work.
  • September 6 - 8: - Society for Social Medicine, Belfast. ICLS members and students presented their work. You can see the title of our presentation from this link.
  • August 4 - 7:  11th International Congress of Behavioral Medicine, Washington DC, USA. ICLS members and students are presenting their work. You can see the title of our presentation from this link.
  •  June 25: 2 - 4pm - NatCen / ICLS Policy Seminar: Education, education, education: A life course perspective. Chair: Richard Bartholomew, Director of Social Research DCSF.  Four short policy relevant presentations will examine education, showing new results from the research of the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) and the ESRC International Centre for Life Course Studies in Society and Health (ICLS).  The presentations work backwards across the life course, from adult education and health inequalities, to the years of formal schooling - specifically the urban /rural divide and young people’s disengagement - to school readiness among young children.  How should the policy and research communities respond?  Transcripts available. See Ocassional Papers 4.1 - 4.1
  • April 30 ( 10:00 - 17:00) . Biomarkers in social science research. Venue: Institute for Fiscal Studies, 7 Ridgmount Street, London WC1E 7AE  The purpose of this one-day workshop is to exchange ideas on the utility of biomarkers in social science research, and to discuss priorities for future data collection.  Speakers include: Professor Melanie Bartley, ICLS
  • March 8 - Age and Employment Conference 2010 (TAEN and the Social MarketFoundation): Who's hurting and what's helping? Tackling unemployment after the recession.  Speakers include: Steve Webb MP, Liberal Democrat Work and PensionsLord David Freud, Shadow Minister for Welfare Reform, Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Contact: zelia.young@taen.org.uk
  • The Centre for Longitudinal Studies International Conference 2010. Understanding ageing: Health, wealth and wellbeing at fifty and beyond.  Dates: 14th to 16th April 2010. St Catherine’s College, University of OxfordBOOKING NOW OPEN – EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT AVAILABLE . For further information and to book a place please visit the conference website .
  • Neville Butler Memorial Lecture 2010. Speaker: Professor Sir Michael Rutter 'The power and potential of longitudinal research'. Wednesday 31 March 2010.  5pm - 6:45pm followed by reception. Free to attend. Elvin Hall, Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL.  
  • NEW COURSE: Lifecourse development: theories and methods 22-25 March 2010

2009

  • December 2- Transitions, choices, and health at older ages: life course analyses of longitudinal data. An upcoming policy seminar chaired by Prof. David Blane, held at the Haldane room, UCL from 1:00pm to 4:00pm.
  • November 17 - Recession and the Public Health What is the evidence? A lunchtime seminar provided by Prof. Bartley, held at the Darwin Lecture Theater, UCL from 1:15pm to 1:55pm. No booking required. Free to public. If you missed, you can catch it up from here.
  • Sept  - BMJ has published Prof. Bartley's letter: Not just down to individuals
  • May - Longitudinal and Life Course Studies has just published its first issue. View the Table of Contents and then log into the website to read the papers and other items of interest.
  • April - New Journal from Longview: Longitudinal and Life Course Studies (LLLS)
  • February 26 -  Listen again: BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Aloud  Impact of recession on Health Inequalities. Laurie Taylor was joined by Mel Bartley, UCL Professor of Medical Sociology and Andrew Oswald, Professor of Economics at Warwick University to discuss the personal and psychological consequences of unemployment in the light of the current global recession.
  • February 26 - ESRC Global Financial Crisis Public Seminar Series. Recession - Health and Happiness  Speakers: Professor Mel Bartley, Director ICLS, Professor Andrew Oswald, Warwick University, and Professor Lord Richard Layard, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE. Chaired by Evan Davis presentor, BBC Radio 's Today Programme.

Page last modified on 18 apr 13 14:11 by Patricia Crowley

ESRC

The International Centre for Lifecourse Studies in Society and Health (ICLS) is funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) RES-596-28-0001 (2008 - 2012). ICLS is a multidisciplinary  research centre, directed by Professor Amanda Sacker, that supports  supports research at UCL,  University of Manchester, University of East London and Örebro  University Hospital Sweden.