Leadership Roles

Director of Internationalisation, School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work, 2025- 2027

Founder and Faculty Lead, Queen's on Ageing. 

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. I have taken a leading role in developing innovative approaches to understanding ageing from inter and transdisciplinary perspectives. In 2024, I founded Queen's on Ageing - a cross-Faculty initiative of over 60 leading researchers of ageing at QUB.

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, the Science and Culture Research Group and the Centre for Public Health. Initiatives include Med Age doctoral training programme, 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. 

I started my postdoctoral career by winning a large grant to investigate 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. Later, 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.

In recent years, my work has taken a more global focus, identifying policy responses to ageing populations as problematic in a range of country contexts. For instance, I am PI of Changing Generations in India, with colleagues from Tezpur University. 

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. 

Convenor: 

SPY2009 Questions for an Ageing World

SPY9002 Policy-engaged research for Public Sociologists

I also contribute to: 

SPY1004 Introducing Social Policy

SOC9038 The Sources and Construction of Qualitative Data

LIB3001 Uses of the Past 

AEL2001 Gender, Culture and Representation: Backwards and in Heels

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. 

As well as Holly Mulhern, who is part of the Dunhill Medical Trust doctoral training programme, I am supervising Murchana Kaushik who is researching intergenerational transmission of sectarian values through the Tezpur-QUB knowledge exchange programme. Previous PhD students include Angel Leira Pernas who is now a policy officer at Commissioner for Older People, NI and Elizabeth Martin, lecturer in Social Policy at Queen's. 

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. 

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.' 

I am External Examiner on the Gerontology programme at University of Southampton