It was my pleasure to attend and actively participate in the International Aging and Society Conference from 7-8th November 2014.

This year’s conference focused primarily on “Diversity and Aging” as well as four other themes: Economic and Demographic Perspectives on Aging; Public Policy and Public Perspectives on Aging; Medical Perspectives on Aging, Health, Wellness; Social and Cultural Perspectives on Aging. Aging and Society is one of the knowledge communities within Common Ground Publishing. The conference programme covered a mix of oral presentations, keynotes, posters and parallel sessions, where speakers presented their research across a broad range of topics. I presented the findings of the systematic scoping review on Care Navigation for Older People with Multimorbidity, which is part of my PhD research.

Receiving the “Graduate Scholar Award” prior to the start of the conference, provided me with many wonderful opportunities. As an early career researcher, it was a real pleasure to chair sessions on topics of interest to me. Having a more prominent role at the conference enabled me to network with peers and senior researchers. Chairing or moderating sessions at a conference is usually a task for more experienced researchers. Getting the chance to do this at such an early stage in my career has has given me the chance to develop some new skills, which will shape me academically and personally. A couple of my fellow PhD students and early career research colleagues asked me afterwards ‘how does chairing a session work’? I decided to use this question as a way to report back on the Aging and Society Conference in a separate blog post focusing on how to chair conference sessions.