ARU team
Dangeni
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
InterCare seeks to explore the intersection of education and caregiving, specifically highlighting the opportunities and challenges faced by young adult caregivers in education (YCE) and older adults receiving care in Germany, Poland and the UK.
InterCare is a four-year long (2024-2028) project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and involving four partners: Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein in Germany, Jagiellonian-University in Poland, and ARU.
InterCare addresses the research gap through three main aims: 1) to enhance country-comparative knowledge about intergenerational care arrangements with a focus on a currently under-researched group (YCE); 2) to explore ways to harness the potential of intergenerational care arrangements by raising awareness of and improving the situation of YCE and older care recipients across Europe; and 3) to establish a European research network aiming to equip early career researchers (ECR) with sound methodological knowledge and innovative participatory tools for researching intergenerational relations.
Four work packages are designed to achieve the project aim of understanding the experiences of intergenerational caregiving relationships in a collaborative, inclusive and participatory manner with a wide range of key stakeholders.
Lead institution: University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein, Germany
Approaches: Questionnaire with student carers
Aims: Capture a diverse range of experiences within this specific demographic, allowing for a comprehensive analysis of how caregiving while in education impacts various life domains.
Lead institution: ARU
Approaches: Audio diary and dyadic interview with student carers and their care-recipients
Aims: Navigate experiences from both perspectives towards intergenerational relations, the challenges YCE and the older adults are facing and the potentials they see.
Lead institution: Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Approaches: Delphi panel survey with national and local policy makers, professionals and practitioners in education and care
Aims: Explores the awareness and attitudes of stakeholders in educational institutions, practitioners in NGOs and counselling, and local, national and transnational policymakers in the field of care and education.
Lead institution: Jagiellonian-University, Poland
Approaches: Intergenerational innovation labs with student carers and older care recipients
Aims: Develop practical and effective support structures that meet their unique needs in a participatory manner. It will generate new, adequate, and feasible solutions that can be recommended at various levels of governance.
The advisory board is comprised of key stakeholders in education and young adult carers across the three countries:
As part of the InterCare project, a European early career researcher (ECR) network has been established to equip ECRs with sound methodological knowledge and innovative participatory tools for researching intergenerational relations.
On a monthly basis, the network engages ECRs and researchers at different career stages through a variety of activities:
We welcome early career researchers (PhD candidates, postdocs) and scholars at all levels interested in intergenerational relations. For more details or to express interest, email Dr Dangeni at [email protected]
Prof Marie-Pierre Moreau is Professor in Sociology of Education, Work and Inequalities at ARU. She is the Director of the Centre for Education Research on Identities and Inequalities (CERII), also at ARU. She is the editor of the journal Access: Critical explorations of equity in higher education, and of the Bloomsbury Gender and Education book series.
Dr Dangeni is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow for InterCare, She is a higher education researcher-practitioner with a focus on inclusion and navigating the experiences of international and minoritised cohorts. Her work explores the intersections of higher education, internationalisation and inequalities.
Prof Jolanta Perek-Białas is an economist, sociologist and gerontologist dealing with ageing issues but also with methodological ones (surveys, mix-method approach). Her research interest focuses mainly on socio-economic situation of older persons in Central and Eastern Europe, including active ageing, ageism in the labour market policy, old age social exclusion, age-friendly approach and organisation of care for older persons, supporting working caregivers.
Dr Anna Urbaniak is a sociologist, Assistant Professor at Jagiellonian University. She specialises in aging studies and public policy, with research experience in Ireland, Austria, and Poland. An award-winning scholar, she co-edited the Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Approaches in Ageing Research and leads the European COST Action CA22167 on participatory aging research.
Joanna Kwinta-Odrzywolek has extensive experience in conducting research, marketing studies and evaluation projects for both private and public institutions. She is an evaluation and research expert in social innovation projects and projects focuses on situation of older persons. She also specialises in competence development across different sectors, as well as labour market trends and challenges.
Dr Anna Wanka is a sociologist and critical gerontologist interested in un/doing difference and the material-discursive construction of age across the life course. She did her PhD in Sociology at the University of Vienna, Austria, and is currently a research group leader at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. Her areas of expertise comprise life course transitions and the re/production of intersectional inequalities across the life course, ageing and technologies, age-friendly cities and communities, ageing migrants, and lifelong learning.
Prof Moritz Hess is a professor of gerontology at the University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein. He earned a PhD in Sociology from the University of Mannheim and held positions at the Institute for Gerontology at TU Dortmund and the University of Bremen.
Joy Pirig is a health scientist and works as a research associate at the University of Applied Sciences Niederrhein. She did her MSc at the University of Applied Science Niederrhein. In her Master’s thesis, she examined the stress situation of young carers and young adult cares in Germany.
Project investigates issues faced by young carers, ARU press release, 10 January 2024.
Postdoctoral Research Fellow