Professor Norah Keating

Sustainable Care Senior Team, Director of Capacity Building

Professor Norah Keating is a social gerontologist whose professional life has been devoted to enhancing quality of life of older adults. She has an international reputation for her work in families, liveable communities and care.

Her recent work includes editorship of special issues on “Families and Aging in Global Context” (Canadian Journal on Aging, 2015); and on “Ageing and Community” (Journal of Community and Social Psychology, 2014). Her work on social isolation includes a book “From exclusion to inclusion in old age: A global challenge” (with Professor T. Scharf, 2012) and articles on loneliness of older Canadians. She was lead author on the first national report on family/friend caregiving, published by Statistics Canada.

She has also published a systematic review of the economic costs of family/friend care and is conducting research on assistive technologies to support caregivers.

Dr Keating is Professor of Rural Ageing, Swansea University; Co-Director of Research on Aging, Policies and Practice at the University of Alberta; and Extraordinary Professor, North-West University, South Africa.

As part of her international research and capacity building activities, she directs the International Association on Gerontology and Geriatrics’ (IAGG) Global Social Initiative on Ageing. She has served as President of the Alberta Association on Gerontology and the Canadian Association on Gerontology; and as Chair of the North American Region, International Association on Gerontology and Geriatrics.

Dr Keating is often called on by governments and NGOs to provide evidence to inform social and health policy. Recent consultations include a report on intergenerational relationships for the UK government; and technical advising to the World Health Organisation on two initiatives: The World Report on Ageing and Health and Community-based Initiatives to Support Older Adults in Low Income Countries. She has worked with the Government of Canada on its’ national campaign to reduce loneliness and social exclusion of older adults.

Professor Norah Keating also chaired a presidential symposium entitled Envisioning Long Term Care at the Gerontological Society of America Conference (2016). She was a keynote speaker at the Congress of the Africa Region of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics on Setting Agendas for Long Term Care Systems in Africa.

Research and publications

Keating, N., Funk, L., Fast, J., and Min, J. (2019). Life course trajectories of family care. International Journal of Care and Caring

Salma, J., Ogilvie, L. and Keating, N. (2018). An intersectional exploration: Experiences of stroke prevention in middle-aged and older Arab Muslim immigrant women in Canada. Canadian Journal of Nursing Research.

Officer, A., Warth, L., Beard, J. and Keating, N. (2018). Age-friendly environments and their role in supporting Healthy Ageing, Chapter 23. In Michel, J-P., Beattie, L., Martin, F., Walston, J. (Eds). Oxford Textbook of Geriatric Medicine 3 edn. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Pp171-177.

C. Stephens, V. Burholt and N. Keating. (2018). Collecting data with older people. Chapter 40, The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection, p632-652 Uwe Flick (Ed). Sage Publications, London

Salma, J., Keating, N and Ogilvie, L., Hunter, K. (2017). Social Dimensions of Health across the Life Course: Barriers and Facilitators to Engaging in Health-Promoting Practices in Middle-Aged and Older Arab Immigrant Women. Nursing Inquiry

Anderson, S. and Keating, N. (2017). Marriage after the transition to stroke: A systematic Review. Ageing and Society, 1-39

More publications on Professor Norah Keating's Swansea University webpage