The blog supports and exapnds the work of the Times of Our Lives inter- and multi-disciplinary research project and brings together varied approaches to the study and contemplation of the life-course. The project examines the idea and meaning of the human ‘life course’. We age from the moment we are born. The changes we undergo are complex, multifaceted and, above all, inevitable. From a biological perspective, these changes follow a broad pattern that applies to everyone (the exceptions being regarded as abnormal). However, human development does not happen in the body alone; it happens in life, in the bio-social sphere that is our natural habitat. The developmental sequence which is known as the ‘life-course’ does have physiological bench-marks that both enable and constrain action, but its nature and the significance of its phases depend on how the typical events of the life span are interpreted by culture and understood by individuals.

All manner of dialogue is welcome: for example, researchers in the field of childhood and old age, say, could explore and discuss literary and psychiatric approaches and, perhaps, find common ground; or, historians might confer about adolescence and senescence in the same breath, as it were, along the way generating new insights about the changing vicissitudes of the human condition. Welcome to the blog; we look forward to sharing insights and perspectives from across the globe and from across a variety of contexts, disciplines, professions and vocations.

Making Sense Of: Growing Up, Growing Old