Professor Sarah Harper

Ageing and longevity are amongst the greatest challenges of our times. Professor Sarah Harper is a specialist in demographics and ageing, speaking internationally on the subject. As Clore Professor of Gerontology at the University of Oxford Professor Sarah Harper speaks on the social, economic, and demographic implications of ageing populations. She is a Fellow at University College and is the founding director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing. Professor Harper founded the institute in 1997 as the first in the world dedicated to the study. Her work today examines the implications of ageing populations, from effects on resources, to changes in employment patterns, through to the challenges of decreasing fertility.

Sarah served on the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology advising on evidence for the development of strategic policy on ageing. In 2017 she served as the Director of the Royal Institution. She is a Director and Trustee of the UK Research Integrity Office and a member of the Board of Health Data Research UK. She has chaired the UK government’s Foresight Review on Ageing Populations and the Evaluation Board of the Active Ageing Index for the EC/UNECE Population Board since 2015. She is a Governor of the Pensions Policy Institute. For her research work Sarah was recognized by the Royal Society for Public Health with the Arts and Health Research Award.

Professor Harper’s current research addresses the social and economic impact of falling fertility and increasing life expectancy, particularly in Asia and in Africa. Recent work has focused on women’s education and empowerment in sub-Saharan Africa, impact on family size, older women’s health in Africa, European life course trajectories, and late life female health.

Currently Sarah Harper is directing two research projects looking at the ageing of farmers in Vietnam and in Myanmar. Sarah has just completed a monograph How Population Change will Transform our World for Oxford University Press and is working on her next book for Cambridge University Press on population, new technologies and environmental change. Sarah is the founding editor of the Journal of Population Ageing and editor of the Handbook of Ageing and Public Policy.