Open Session: Uncharted Territories In the Sociology of Ageing

Some of the most generative work in our field doesn't yet fit neatly into established thematic categories. This open session is deliberately unthemed: it offers a space for papers on emerging, unconventional, or under-researched aspects of ageing and later life that push beyond the Congress's other RC11 sessions. We welcome contributions exploring new empirical phenomena, unconventional theoretical framings, methodological experiments, or topics that simply haven't yet found a disciplinary home — including but not limited to: ageing and emerging technologies beyond gerontechnology's usual frames; speculative or anticipatory approaches to future old age; non-human and multispecies perspectives on ageing; ageing in digital/virtual and post-physical spaces; humour, play, and pleasure in later life; ageing and the arts, aesthetics, or sensory experience; queer and non-normative life courses in old age; ageing on the margins of existing categories (statelessness, informality, post-conflict zones). The aim is to surface work that is too early-stage, too interdisciplinary, or too unconventional for a thematically bounded session, and to give space to scholars — especially early-career researchers — testing new ideas before they're fully formed. Papers need not fit a single coherent thread; the session's coherence comes from its shared spirit of intellectual risk-taking.

Possible topics: speculative/anticipatory ageing studies; multispecies and non-human ageing; digital and virtual later life; humour, play, and pleasure in old age; queer life courses; ageing in informal or marginal social spaces; experimental and unconventional methodologies.