Barbara L. Marshall (bmarshall@trentu.ca)
I retired from teaching at the end of 2021, after 32 years in the Sociology Department at Trent. I taught a range of courses over the years, was a founding member of the Trent Centre for Aging and Society and was honoured with Trent’s Distinguished Research Award in 2006. Both my teaching and research have been in the areas of social theory, gender, sexuality, embodiment, ageing and technologies.
I continue to collaborate, research, and write while enjoying retirement on the west coast of Canada. I am currently principal investigator on the SSHRC-funded project “Digital Culture and Quantified Aging” (with Stephen Katz and Wendy Martin), co-investigator on the Aging in Data research partnership (PI Kim Sawchuk) and have recently completed a CIHR-funded project (with Stephen Katz) on digital infrastructures for health and aging as part of a four-country collaboration through the European “More Years, Better Lives” initiative. Some current projects include research on how old bodies are visualized through datafied care technologies (with Wendy Martin, Kirsten Ellison and Isabel Pedersen), the implications of AI systems for reshaping gerontological knowledge (with a team of collaborators from the international Sociogerontechnology Network) and the need for more nuanced and multidimensional understandings of ‘technogenarians’ (with Stephen Katz, Nicole Dalmer and Kirsten Ellison).
Some recent publications:
Ellison, K. L., Martin, W., Pedersen, I. & Marshall, B. L. (2022). Visualizing the datasphere: Representations of old bodies and their data in promotional images of smart sensor technologies for aging at home. Frontiers in Sociology, 7. 10.3389/fsoc.2022.1008510.
Jones, R. L., Marshall, B. L. & Sandberg, L. J. (2022). Virtual roundtable discussion of ‘Revisioning ageing futures: Feminist, queer, crip and decolonial visions of a good old age’. Journal of Aging Studies, 63, 101082. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2022.101082.
Dalmer, N.K. and Marshall, B.L. (2022) The role of information in later life sexuality: An invitation for further exploration. The Gerontologist https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnac059
Marshall, B.L. (2022) Contesting functionality: A challenge for critical gerontology. Age, Culture, Humanities, 6 (Special forum on Contested Language), https://doi.org/10.7146/ageculturehumanities.v6i.133345
Dalmer, N.K, Ellison, K.L, Katz, S. and Marshall B.L. (2022) Aging, embodiment and datafication: dynamics of power in digital health and care technologies. International Journal of Ageing and Later Life, 15(2), 77-101 doi: 10.3384/ijal.1652-8670.3499
Marshall, B.L., Dalmer, N.K., Katz, S., Loos, E. López Gómez, D. and Peine, A. (2022) Digitization of Aging-in-Place: An International Comparison of the Value-Framing of New Technologies, Societies 12, 35, https://doi.org/10.3390/ soc12020035
Peine, A., Marshall, B.L., Martin, W., Nevin, L. (eds) (2021). Socio-gerontechnology: Interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Ageing and Technology. Routledge (Series: Routledge Advances in Sociology)
Allain, K. and Marshall, B.L. (2020) “It used to be called an old man’s game”: Masculinity, ageing embodiment, and senior curling participation”, Journal of Aging and Later Life, 14(2): 9-33
Marshall, B.L. (2019) “Men are not women”: Biomedicine and the (hetero)sexing of ageing bodies, in S. Pickard and J. Robinson (eds) Ageing, the Body and the Gender Regime: Health, Illness and Dis-ease Across the Life Course. Routledge, 128-142
Katz, S. and Marshall, B.L. (2018) Tracked and fit: Fitbits, brain games and the quantified aging body. Journal of Aging Studies, 45, 63-68
Marshall, B.L. (2018) Our Fitbits, our (aging) selves? Wearables, self-tracking and aging embodiment in Ageing and Everyday Life: Embodiments and Materialities (ed., Stephen Katz), Policy Press, 197-214
Marshall, B.L. (2018) Happily ever after? The heterosexual imaginary of ‘successful aging’ European Journal of Cultural Studies, 21(3), 363-381