Amanda Grenier, PhD
Amanda Grenier is the Director of the Institute for Life Course and Aging at the University of Toronto. She is a Professor at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, the Norman & Honey Schipper Chair in Gerontological Social Work, and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Hospital’s Academy for Research and Education.
She is an internationally recognized critical gerontologist and interdisciplinary social scientist whose work has influenced contemporary understandings of aging, and in particular aging and inequality. Professor Grenier has led and collaborated on major national and international research projects and has consistently been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Her research has focused on social constructions of frailty, transitions and the life course, social exclusion among older people, late life homelessness, precarity and aging, and the consent to participate in research among older people with dementia.
Professor Grenier has held academic appointments at leading Canadian and international institutions. She completed her MSW and PhD at McGill University/Université de Montréal, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at the Centre on Social Gerontology at Keele University, UK. She then returned to Canada to take up a position in the McGill School of Social Work where she taught aging and social care, social theory, and qualitative research. Following this she moved to McMaster University to assume the Gilbrea Chair in Aging and Mental Health, Professorship in the Department of Health, Aging and Society, and became the Inaugural Director of the Gilbrea Centre for Studies in Aging. Her international leadership includes appointments as Leverhulme Visiting Fellow at Keele University, Hallsworth Visiting Fellow at the University of Manchester, and Katz Distinguished Scholar in Interdisciplinary Age Studies at Trent University.
Professor Grenier has authored the widely recognized books Transitions and the lifecourse: Challenging the constructions of ‘growing old’ (Policy Press/University of Chicago Press), Late life homelessness: Experiences of disadvantage and unequal aging (McGill Queens University Press), and co-edited Precarity and aging: Understanding changing forms of risk and vulnerability in later life (Policy Press/University of Chicago Press). She has also authored and contributed to an additional 100+ peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in leading journals and collections across gerontology, social work, and related fields. Professor Grenier ran the International Network on Critical Gerontology for nearly 20 years, and is currently a co-editor of the Global Ageing Series (Policy Press) and on the Board of the Journal of Aging Studies.
Her current projects as principal investigator include: Urban poverty in the everyday lives of older people: Case studies of Toronto and Montreal and the newly funded partnership grant Aging in the Margins: Building Inclusivity and Goodwill (AIM BIG). Her teaching and graduate supervision at the University are in the areas of aging and the life course, issues related to care, poverty and exclusion, and the experiences of ‘vulnerable’ groups.