| Thibault, MacKinlay and Alemán to Present During the Fall Conference on Spirituality and Age-ing |
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Dr. Jane Thibault's presentation, "Dedicated Suffering: A Bio-Spiritual Response to Pain and Suffering," will address two kinds of suffering encountered in aging: the pain and suffering that we ourselves experience and the pain that we feel when we watch the suffering of others.
Dr. Liz MacKinlay's presentation, "Loneliness in Later Life: Will the Experience of Baby Boomers be Different?" will look at loneliness as one of the current major challenges for older, frail people who live alone. In particular, Dr. MacKinlay's presentation will take into account the future of aging baby boomers and their spiritual resources. She raises the question whether the experience of aging will be different for Baby Boomers and what resources will they be able to harness to remain resilient and flourish in the face of increasing losses, disabilities and increasing dependence?
Dr. Melissa Alemán's presentation, "Managing Dialectical Tensions in Later Life Marriages and Families," will explore tensions experienced in communication between long term married couples, as well as communication with their adult children. Issues of shifting and stable relational expectations, responsiveness to changing health conditions, enduring ethics of care, and dilemmas of control and autonomy between couples and their adult children will set the context for understanding relational change in later life.
This year's online conference features a collaboration between the Wayne E. Oates Institute, located in Louisville, Kentucky, The Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability in Aberdeen, Scotland, and the Centre for Ageing & Pastoral Studies in Canberra, Australia. Other presenters for the conference include Dr. Harriet Mowatt from Mowatt Research in Aberdeen, Scotland, and Dr. John Swinton from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
This conference will be held in the Oates Institute's Online Learning Center November 3-14, 2008. It will feature online presentations that will be accessible 24/7 and interactive opportunities with presenters and colleagues that will be convenient to participants' schedules. One of the key opportunities for interaction will be the scheduled Live Chats with presenters. The methodology that will be used for the conference will make it easily adaptable to each participant’s schedule and because it is online, participants will not be hindered by the time and expense of travel.
Registration is open to anyone; the registration fee is $35 for Oates Institute members and $79 for non-members through October 15 ($99 after October 15).
More information about the Conference
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