Member of UKRI Peer Review College

Academic Lead, Strategic Partnership with University of Southern California

Disciplinary Lead, Social Policy, 2020-2022.

International Liaison, Executive Committee of the British Society of Gerontology 2015 -2020.

Editorial boards: Ageing & Society & Journal of Adult Protection. 

I am a social and cultural gerontologist who works across disciplines to explore human ageing. In recent years I have taken a leading role in developing innovative approaches to understanding ageing from inter and transdisciplinary perspectives. I have been commissioned by the UKRI to write funding calls on international aspects of ageing and regularly review for all the major journals and funders.  I have been invited to contribute chapters to major international handbooks and encyclopedias since publishing a well-received textbook Critical Questions for Ageing Societies in 2020.

Since moving to Queen's from the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology in 2014, I have developed a range projects around the inter-disciplinary studies of ageing with colleagues from ARK and the Science and Culture Research Group. Initiatives include the Lively Project funded by the Wellcome Trust, which used material culture to explore the meaning of living a long life and an AHRC funded project called Dementia in the Minds of Characters and Readers. I am a member of the Centre for Inclusion, Transformation and Equality a vibrant centre for collaborative work on social justice. I lead the ageing research theme for CITE. 

Previous work made a contribution to policy formulation and critique in the area of civil society engagement with the State, in particular on corporatism and policies for disadvantaged groups in the Republic of Ireland. I was also one of team of researchers on Changing Generations, a longitudinal, grounded theory study of solidarity between generations in the Republic of Ireland (http://www.sparc.tcd.ie/generations/). In recent years, my work has taken a more global focus, idetifying policy responses to ageing populations as problematic in a range of country context. 

I am keen to support applications for postgraduate research in any of the above areas but especially on furthering our understanding of ageing and older people, cultural gerontology, politics of ageing or gender scholars with an interest in ageing societies. 

I am currently supervising Angel Leira Pernas whose work builds on the Lively Project and is funded by DfE award and Murchana Kaushik who is researching intergenerational transmission of sectarian values through the Tezpur-QUB knowledge exchange programme. 

I am interested in supervising PhD students on social policy in ageing societies, cultural gerontology and projects relating to lifecourse issues which use either qualitative or participatory research methods. 

Published textbook Critical Questions for Ageing Societies, September 2020 (with Paul Nash at the Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, USA). This book has been nominated for the Richard Kalish Award 2021 for innovation in research and publication in aging. 

I won a student nominated University Teaching Award, 2019 for my use of a diverse range of inclusive teaching methods and resources to critically engage students with complex elements of their learning. The students said 'Dr. Carney is a wonderful role model who continues to research and write and go beyond the teacher's role to get her students to learn.'