Mark Skinner is founding Director of the Trent Centre for Aging & Society and Associate Professor of Geography, Trent University. He is a health geographer and leading scholar on ageing rural communities. His international collaborations have included invited research fellowships at Université d’Angers (France) and National University of Ireland Galway, most recently as a Rural Ageing Observatory Visiting Fellow at the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology. He was co-Chair of the 2014 International Symposium on Aging Resource Communities.
Featuring community-based research in Canada, France, Ireland and New Zealand, his work has advanced our understanding of the evolving role of the voluntary sector and volunteering in supporting older rural people and in sustaining ageing rural communities. His most recent contributions include a special issue paper on ageing, place and voluntarism in Voluntary Sector Review (2014), a landmark review of geographical contributions to social gerontology in Progress in Human Geography (in press) and the forthcoming (2015) Routledge book, Ageing Resource Communities: New Frontiers of Rural Population Change, Community Development and Voluntarism.
Mark is currently engaged in international comparative research on age-friendly rural communities in Australia, Canada and Ireland, and at the local level, is a member of the Age-Friendly Peterborough steering committee.
Mark’s areas of expertise are health geography, social gerontology and rural ageing. His research focuses on ageing in rural communities, health and social care for older rural people, and volunteer-based support for ageing in place. His research features place-based theorizations, community-based approaches and policy critiques. Mark’s particular emphasis is on better understanding the evolving role of voluntarism in ageing societies.