Anne Martin-Matthews, PhD
Dr. Anne Martin-Matthews is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia and conducts research on aging and in social gerontology. In recent years, Anne has been actively engaged in academic and research administration. From May 2017- October 2018, she served as Acting Vice-President, Research, Knowledge Translation and Ethics, for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in Ottawa. Prior to that, she completed two terms (2004-2011) as the Scientific Director of the Institute of Aging. Under her leadership, the CIHR Institute of Aging led the development of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), launched in 2009, a 20-year study of 50,000 Canadians aged 45-85. Since coming to UBC in 1998, she has held positions as Associate Dean Research, Associate Dean Strategic Initiatives, and Dean pro tem in the Faculty of Arts. She has been a member of the Department of Sociology since 2008. Prior to coming to UBC, she was founding Director of the pan-University Gerontology Research Centre, and a member of the Department of Family Studies, at the University of Guelph (1978-1997). Anne Martin-Matthews is a Fellow of the (U.S.) Gerontological Society of America and of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. She holds a Distinguished Alumnus Award from McMaster University, and a Commemorative Medal for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, from the Canadian Association on Gerontology, and for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, from the Government of Canada. In recognition of her contributions to research on aging, she was awarded Honorary Degrees in Civil Law from Newcastle University (UK) in 2010, and Memorial University in 2018, and was inducted as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2018.
Anne’s current research focuses on two areas of inquiry in the sociology of aging. The first examines the provision of health and social care to elderly people, examined from the perspectives of agency providers, home care workers, elderly clients, and family carers. The focus is on three points of intersection: the nexus of public and private spheres, where workers provide publicly funded services in the private home sphere; of professional and non-professional labour, examining relationships between employers, co-workers, clients and caregivers; and of paid and unpaid labour, focusing on the emotional vs contractual nature of ‘care’, provision of unpaid time to meet client need, and the unpaid labour of family and friends in ‘sharing’ of care. This CIHR-funded project, Home Care in Canada: Caring at the Nexus of the Public and the Private Spheres, examines data from British Columbia, Ontario and Nova Scotia. Current research explores the application of the concept of ‘ensembles’ to the dynamics of care for older people, and the intersection of relational space and time dynamics in care in later life.
Her second area of current research focuses on Finland – Canada comparisons of issues of formal and informal care, working with post-doctoral fellow, Mari Aaltonen, Tampere University, Finland. In current analyses, they are examining two waves of data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.
Email: amm@mail.ubc.ca