Deep insights into the practice

On October 1, 2021—International Day of Older Persons—the first academic symposium on social gerontology took place at the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences.

As part of an academic lecture, Dr. Anne Münch (Berlin) presented findings from her PhD thesis on the stress experienced by family caregivers of people with dementia. Students had the opportunity to ask questions about the methodological approach, fieldwork, the analysis of interviews, and gender-related aspects.

The session then turned to the career prospects opened up by a degree in Social Gerontology. In three keynote presentations, Kerstin Motzer, Senior Citizens’ Representative for the City of Leipzig, Matthias Reuter, social planner and care coordinator for the Görlitz district, and Volker Amrhein, long-time director of the “Generational Dialogue” project, provided insights into their professional fields in three presentations and answered questions about all aspects of entering the workforce. The event clearly demonstrated how important social gerontologists are in a wide variety of areas of administration, politics, and civil society—and will likely become even more so in the future.