Background

The need for explicit multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary approaches in the study of later life has been advanced by scientists and other research stakeholders in the field of ageing for some time (Alkema and Alley Reference Alkema and Alley2006; Clair and Allman Reference Clair and Allman2000). Given that ageing is a multi-dimensional developmental process, it is widely accepted that its understanding requires multi-disciplinary or inter-disciplinary scholarship that involves multiple levels and domains of analysis (Huyck Reference Huyck2003; Settersten Reference Settersten2003).Footnote ¹Kendig (Reference Kendig2003) suggested that the field of environmental gerontology is a model of multi-disciplinarity; it has developed at the intersection of psychology, geography and related disciplines to understand ageing individuals in micro-environments as well as ‘greying’ populations and macro-environments. The advocacy for multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research on ageing is driven by the recognition that a comprehensive understanding of complicated phenomena like ageing is best achieved through the contributions of different disciplines. One exemplar is the Nun Study in the United States of America (USA), a continuing longitudinal investigation of ageing and Alzheimer's disease among the members of a Catholic religious order that has enlisted the perspectives and methods of genetics, neuroscience, nutrition, psycho-linguistics and archival science (Patzwald and Wildt Reference Patzwald and Wildt2004; Riley and Snowdon Reference Riley and Snowdon2000; Snowdon et al. Reference Snowdon, Kemper, Mortimer, Greiner, Wekstein and Markesbery1996, Reference Snowdon, Tully, Smith, Riley and Markesbery2007; Stein et al. Reference Stein, Desrosiers, Donegan, Yepes and Kryscio2007).

Recent efforts to strengthen multi-disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity in ageing research are evinced in the current strategic plan of the Gerontological Society of America, and reflected in the themes of the featured symposia at its annual scientific meetings, e.g. ‘The economics, culture and biology of intergenerational transfers’. Other manifestations are the promotion of the emerging inter-disciplinary field of social neuroscience with reference to ageing by both the United Kingdom (UK) Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the US National Institute on Aging (NIA), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In addition to the aim of creating a wider scientific lens on the ageing process, multi-disciplinary partnerships are being promoted by the pragmatic need to maximise funding resources for research on later life and to avoid duplicative research or ‘reinventing the wheel’ (Beans Reference Beans1999).

Many substantial barriers to inter-disciplinary collaboration in research on ageing persist – among them ideological differences in approaches to knowledge, the lack of training and of dedicated funding for inter-disciplinary research, academic and other disincentives, and inadequate peer review (Giacomini Reference Giacomini2004; Lynch Reference Lynch2006; Pellmar and Eisenberg Reference Pellmar and Eisenberg2000). Given these barriers, government and other research funding bodies worldwide are reviewing and developing methods and means for stimulating multi-disciplinary innovation and sponsoring cross-disciplinary working among researchers in ageing. In the USA, there is a NIH-wide ‘roadmap’ action plan to guide federal research funding in priority areas that require inter-disciplinary collaboration (Hodes Reference Hodes2003). Among the action plan's specific initiatives are support for meetings and networks to develop the methodologies for inter-disciplinary research, funding for inter-disciplinary training and curriculum development, and exploratory centres for inter-disciplinary research. The priorities for research training in the NIA's Behavioral and Social Research Program include, for example, the ‘new disciplines’ of bio-demography, social neuroscience and neuro-economics. Some major US research foundations have also promoted cross-disciplinary collaboration in ageing research. The MacArthur Foundation, for example, during the late 1980s constituted an inter-disciplinary network of scientists around a major ten-year research programme on ‘successful ageing’ (Rowe and Kahn Reference Rowe and Kahn1998).

Another notable example of the national promotion of cross-disciplinary science on ageing is that since the 1980s the Academy of Finland has funded two successive multi-disciplinary programmes of ageing research, the most recent involving disciplines as disparate as neuroscience and architecture (Academy of Finland 2003; Bruun, Hukkinen and Klein Reference Bruun, Hukkinen and Klein2005). Against this international backdrop, this article reviews key developments in the promotion of multi-disciplinary science on ageing in the UK, including the approach to inter-disciplinarity that underlies the New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) Programme, the largest research initiative on ageing to date in the country. Examples of research initiatives from the NDA Programme are used to illustrate its promotion of multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary working.

Towards multi-disciplinary collaboration

Multi-disciplinary research on ageing in the UK is by no means new, especially in areas such as epidemiology that customarily has drawn from various knowledge bases (Ebrahim Reference Ebrahim2006). Until recently, however, cross-disciplinary approaches to ageing research have arisen largely as a result of organic developments between scientists and institutions. The establishment of the Age Concern Institute of Gerontology at King's College London in 1986 was a pioneering multi-disciplinary venture in this country, and several others followed (Warnes Reference Warnes and Warnes1989). The 1990s saw the establishment of multi-disciplinary research centres on ageing at, for example, the Institute for the Health of the Elderly (IHE) (Newcastle University), the Sheffield Institute for Studies on Ageing (Sheffield University), the Cambridge Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Ageing (Cambridge University), the Centre for Ageing and Public Health (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), and the MRC Health Services Research Collaboration (centred at Bristol University with collaborators at seven other universities). Since the late 1990s, there have been more concerted efforts, by both national agencies and professional bodies, to promote multi-disciplinary collaboration in science on ageing. The impetus for a science policy that encourages sustained support for ageing research across the disciplines was provided by the government's Technology Foresight Initiative (1994/95) and the EQUAL (Extend QUAlity Life) initiative (1995), both of which aimed to stimulate research programmes into issues related to population ageing. The profound impact of the latter stemmed not from the allocation of new resources to the Research Councils (RCs) – it was a ‘virtual initiative’, but from the strength of the Department of Trade and Industry's accompanying injunction. Four of the UK's scientific RCs; the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and the Medical Research Council (MRC); each subsequently developed initiatives related to ageing, most of which included a multi-disciplinary focus (Table 1).

Table 1. United Kingdom Research Council programmes and initiatives on ageing

Notes: BBSRC: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. EPSRC: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. ESRC: Economic and Social Research Council. MRC: Medical Research Council.

Also significant at this time was the development of the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing (ELSA), a prospective cohort investigation co-funded by a consortium of UK government departments and the US NIA. Modelled on the NIA-sponsored Health and Retirement Study in the USA, ELSA was launched in 2002 as an inter-disciplinary data resource to address the full range of topics involved in understanding the economic, social, psychological and health elements of the ageing process. In spite of these developments, the RCs recognised that the UK, which has some of the world's foremost researchers in the field of ageing, could obtain added value from existing research through improved working across the disciplines, better co-ordination between different research funders, and more consistent links between researchers and key research-user groups, particularly policy makers and practitioners. An early step towards garnering collaboration among key funding bodies and stakeholder organisations was the AgeNet project (1997–2000). Funded by the MRC with government, non-governmental organisation and industry partners, it aimed ‘to stimulate multi-disciplinary and multi-sector research partnerships relevant to academia, industry and the National Health Service which would have a beneficial outcome for the health and quality of life of older people’ (United Kingdom House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology 2000). AgeNet convened themed workshops to bring together researchers, users of research findings and policy makers towards achieving this aim (e.g. for a report on the workshop on cellular senescence, see Kill Reference Kill1998). It also performed the valuable task of producing a detailed inventory of more than 50 existing longitudinal datasets on ageing from UK studies with potential for multi-disciplinary secondary analysis (Huppert et al. Reference Huppert, Brayne, Jagger and Metz2000). Its promotion of the sharing of knowledge, resources and best practice helped set the stage for a number of subsequent collaborations involving multiple RCs that supported cross-disciplinary ageing research (Table 2).

Table 2. Cross-Research Council initiatives on ageing

Notes: AHRC: Arts and Humanities Research Council. BBSRC: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. EPSRC: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. ESRC: Economic and Social Research Council. MRC: Medical Research Council.

The first of these partnerships was the National Collaboration on Ageing Research (NCAR) that was specifically created to generate a cross-RC approach to ageing research and to encourage multi-disciplinary applications to the RCs (Walker and Hennessy Reference Walker and Hennessy2002). The NCAR was not a research funding programme but rather intended as a vehicle for facilitating the structural and intellectual collaboration on which subsequent cross-RC funding streams for ageing research were to be based. The objectives of the NCAR included:

• • Stimulating new multi-disciplinary research groups in the field of ageing through working with existing ageing research networks (i.e. the EPSRC's EQUAL network and the ESRC's Growing Older programme) and fostering new networks through scientific workshops and consultations with researchers in the field of ageing.

• • Promoting co-ordination among the research funding bodies through working with the Cross-Council Co-ordination Committee on Ageing Research that had members from the sponsoring RCs, and participating in a Funders' Forum for Research on Ageing and Older People with representation from the RCs, the Department of Health and various UK research charities with interest or commitment to research on ageing or age-associated diseases. These activities aimed to identify areas in which joint working would have the maximum impact and to reduce the organisational barriers to inter-disciplinary working through the development of joint strategies for sponsoring and funding research on ageing.

• • Encouraging stronger links between research and policy and practice in the ageing field through consultation with end-users of research including government bodies, non-governmental organisations and charities with interests relevant to ageing and older people.

• • Developing the European dimension of ageing research in the UK through participation in and leadership of the European Research Area on Ageing (ERA-AGE) project (2004–09) funded by the European Commission to conduct parallel research development activities with European partners in nine countries (Geyer Reference Geyer2005).

Since the conclusion of the NCAR in 2004, the RCs have launched the three major co-sponsored research programmes, namely Strategic Promotion of Ageing Research Capacity (SPARC), New Dynamics of Ageing, and Lifelong Health and Well-Being (Table 2). Collectively these initiatives provide broad coverage of topics relevant to the conditions, influences and supports for quality of later life and actively encourage work at the intersection of disciplines. The remainder of this article focuses on one of these programmes, NDA, and the underpinning approach to multi-disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity that was developed through the NCAR.

Defining an approach to inter-disciplinarity

The NCAR's approach to promoting inter-disciplinarity had both ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ elements, that is it worked both with the scientific and research-user communities and with research funders, to identify and address barriers and facilitators to cross-disciplinary collaboration in the UK. This strategy was formed in direct response to a view expressed by scientists at the NCAR launch conference in 2001, that although lip service is paid to the value of multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research projects on later life, there were few examples and, moreover, little practical guidance and many formidable barriers to their formation. The NCAR approach recognised that funding organisations wishing to support inter-disciplinary research face special challenges, including exceptional risks, administrative complexity and the time required for consensus building (Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, National Academy of Sciences 2004).

As the participating RCs had little experience in the joint sponsorship of multi-disciplinary programmes in the field of ageing, they needed to learn how to create new means and mechanisms to support such research. Griffin, Medhurst and Green's (Reference Griffin, Medhurst and Green2006) study of how inter-disciplinarity was operationalised in two major cross-RC-funded programmes (not on ageing)Footnote ² demonstrated, for example, that although the RCs advocated multi-disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity in their policy documents, it was not clearly defined by either the RCs or by the research programmes. The study also revealed that few if any mechanisms were in place to create synergy between multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary programmes and other funded projects. For these reasons, the NCAR approach to promoting such programmes also incorporated Bruun, Hukkinen and Klein's view that ‘funding agencies have much to improve [if they are successfully] to tackle the complexity, contingency and emergent discovery and novelty that characterizes much of interdisciplinary research today’ (2005: 10).

The first substantial step in establishing the NCAR approach was a series of scientific workshops that were designed, among other things, to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and practice among researchers from various disciplines, to prioritise research needs in specific fields of ageing, and to encourage new forms of inter-disciplinary collaboration. The participants' recommendations for an inter-disciplinary research agenda and the practical requirements for stimulating cross-disciplinary collaboration were summarised in workshop reports that were disseminated through NCAR's website. Scientific workshops were convened on topics identified through consultation with UK researchers in ageing and research users on which inter-disciplinary studies were likely to bring substantial advances in knowledge and were highly relevant for policy and practice. A workshop on the determinants of cognitive ageing, as one example, brought together experimental scientists with those working on longitudinal studies and explored the potential for collaboration between psychologists, neurologists and clinical researchers.

The first workshop, ‘Multidisciplinary perspectives and approaches in ageing research’, focused on challenges to and facilitators of the development of multi-disciplinary science in ageing and outlined processes through which diverse disciplines can develop research collaborations across disciplinary boundaries. Among the participants was Norman Anderson of Harvard University, who during the mid-1990s was the founding Director of the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) at the NIH, where he was charged with integrating behavioural and social sciences research across the biomedical and health research agenda of the then 24 Centers and Institutes of the NIH. Anderson's workshop presentation and further consultation with the NCAR provided many valuable insights about the conditions and structures necessary for the development of successful cross-agency-sponsored inter-disciplinary research initiatives.

Several of the main planks in the NCAR approach to inter-disciplinarity emerged from this meeting. First and foremost was the underlying principle that the research problem should always be the prime driver of inter-disciplinary collaboration (Pellmar and Eisenberg Reference Pellmar and Eisenberg2000; Rowe Reference Rowe, Kessel, Rosenfield and Anderson2003). In other words, it was recognised that some research questions are best addressed by a single discipline, and inappropriate projects should not be created solely for the sake of multi-disciplinarity. Indiscriminate support for such research has prompted some gerontologists, such as Daatland (Reference Daatland and Andersson2002), to question what the ‘cage of interdisciplinarity’ has to offer for the contributing parent disciplines, and incited Grimley Evans's charge that ‘multidisciplinary research provides employment for social scientists but has no other inevitable value’ (although he added that ‘its relevance depends on the question being asked’) (2002: 94). Bass (Reference Bass2006) also expressed concern that multi-disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity in gerontology has often meant the unconsidered ‘piling on’ of additional disciplinary perspectives without achieving conceptual integration or theory building. Cross-disciplinary working must therefore be non-prescriptive, fit for purpose and formed of projects that make a contribution that is ‘larger than the sum of its parts’.

The second plank in the approach was the incorporation of Anderson's (Reference Anderson1998) conceptual framework for advancing inter-disciplinary research. Compared to multi-disciplinary collaborations in which the separate disciplinary approaches are brought to bear on a research question, inter-disciplinary working is inherently more complicated, for it requires shared models, concepts and terms. According to Anderson (Reference Anderson1998), inter-disciplinary research is therefore best approached through a process in which the initial studies in an area typically involve cognate disciplines in bridging adjacent ‘levels of analysis’ (e.g. the psychological and the social), and later proceed to investigations that link less closely related levels (e.g. the genetic and the environmental) and fields.Footnote ³ Although studies may be highly inter-disciplinary by design from the outset, this type of research more often results through convergent working among the team members and by drawing on the strengths and understanding of the various disciplines to create new integrative terminologies, approaches and methodologies (Bracken and Oughten Reference Bracken and Oughton2006; Marmot and Steptoe Reference Marmot, Steptoe, Weinstein, Vaupel and Wachter2007; Rosenfield and Kessel Reference Rosenfield, Kessel, Kessel, Rosenfield and Anderson2003). Inter-disciplinary research on the effects of social status and perceived stress on cell senescence (Cherkas et al. Reference Cherkas, Aviv, Valdes, Hunkin, Gardner, Surdulescu, Kimura and Spector2006; Epel et al. Reference Epel, Blackburn, Lin, Dhabhar, Adler, Morrow and Cawthon2004), for example, combines well-established psychological theories about stress and coping with known mechanisms of cellular ageing to posit pathways by which social factors ‘get under the skin’ to affect the course of ageing. Thus, the scope of aspired inter-disciplinarity should recognise that ‘narrow inter-disciplinarity’ involving neighbouring disciplines is easier to achieve and may be a sensible first step towards ‘broad inter-disciplinarity’ that brings together very different epistemologies, concepts, theories and methods (Bruun, Hukkinen and Klein Reference Bruun, Hukkinen and Klein2005).

Finally, the third plank of the approach is to identify and address challenges to and facilitators of inter-disciplinary research collaboration. Many and diverse barriers to inter-disciplinary working have been recognised. Bruun, Hukkinen and Klein (Reference Bruun, Hukkinen and Klein2005), for example, identified seven: structural impediments (the organisation of science and associated incentives), lack of knowledge (unfamiliarity with other disciplines and of a vision of their potential contributions), cultural obstacles (differing accepted understandings, practices, values and language), epistemological differences (divergent disciplinary world views), methodological differences (varying styles of enquiry), psychological factors (attitudes and disciplinary identity), and reluctant reception (lack of understanding of the value of inter-disciplinary research by non-scientific audiences). As shown in Table 3, various barriers to inter-disciplinary collaboration were highlighted by participants in the NCAR workshops.

Table 3. Examples of perceived barriers to inter-disciplinarity in research on ageing

The workshop participants also nominated some priorities for the RCs and NCAR to reduce these barriers, many of which reflect recognised ‘success factors’ for cross-disciplinary working (Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, National Academy of Sciences 2004; Rowe Reference Rowe, Kessel, Rosenfield and Anderson2003). These included, for example, regular workshops for scientists from different disciplines, more dedicated funding for inter-disciplinary research, ‘discipline-hopping’ fellowships for inter-disciplinary training, and improving access to sources such as longitudinal datasets and established research panel populations.

Implementing the approach: the NDA Programme

The NCAR's emphasis on multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaboration combined with relevance to policy and practice, research-user engagement and a focus on quality of life for older people were all key strands in the subsequent development of the NDA, the largest programme of research on ageing mounted to date in the UK. Jointly funded by the ESRC, EPSRC, MRC, BBSRC, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the seven-year programme was launched in 2006 with a budget of over £20 million. The content of NDA was developed in consultation with the UK ageing research community through a workshop organised by the NCAR for the ESRC in December 2002 titled Ageing Research: The Next Step?, and an associated internet consultation to establish priority areas. The resulting research agenda has the following principal questions: What are the new dynamics of ageing? What are the influences shaping them (behavioural, biological, clinical, cultural, historical, social and technological)? How can their consequences be managed to achieve the maximum benefits for older people? The two major themes of the programme address ageing well across the lifecourse (through sub-themes of active ageing; autonomy and independence; later life transitions; the oldest old), and ageing and its environment (under sub-themes of resources for ageing; locality, place and participation; the built and technological environment; and the global dynamics of ageing).

In addition to these substantive themes, the programme also has the generic objective of supporting innovative multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research groups and methods that will benefit ageing research and improve the quality of life of older people. This objective encompasses previous recommendations including, for example, for the analysis of existing data sources from an inter-disciplinary perspective, the formulation of eclectic multi-disciplinary teams and hybrid methodologies, and the integration of research with product development. The remit of the NDA Programme thus offers a greatly expanded scope for pursuing many areas of the inter-disciplinary research agenda identified in the NCAR workshops and in previous and current assessments of the state of ageing research in the UK (Franco et al. Reference Franco, Kirkwood, Powell, Catt, Goodwin, Ordovas and van der Ouderaa2007; Harper Reference Harper2000). Support for doctoral training of inter-disciplinary researchers in ageing is also incorporated. Research projects are required to cross the areas covered by at least two of the participating RCs, and applicants must specify how a project will involve the collaboration of multiple disciplines and the inter-disciplinarity nature of the investigation, including innovative methodologies and potential contributions to theory.

In the four rounds of commissioning to date, the NDA Programme has supported three types of projects: Collaborative Research Projects (CRPs), large-scale investigations typically involving several interconnected sub-studies around a multi- or inter-disciplinary theme; individual Programme Grants, which are smaller, stand-alone projects that do not necessarily have to follow the multi-disciplinary requirements of CRPs (but most have in fact done so); and Preparatory Networks, which provided short-term funding for research teams to develop CRP applications. The following section illustrates how the Preparatory Networks innovation pursued multi-disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity.

The NDA preparatory networks: incubating inter-disciplinarity

One of the principal barriers to achieving inter-disciplinary collaboration are the resources required to support the extended planning period which characterises this type of research, especially between disciplines with little previous history of intellectual partnership. Time and seed-corn money are recognised as invaluable for accomplishing key tasks in the planning phase, such as recruiting appropriate team members, creating liaisons between the research team and appropriate constituencies, lining up potential consultants, space and facilities, and conducting scoping reviews of relevant conceptual models and literatures (Klein Reference Klein1990; Tait and Lyall Reference Tait and Lyall2001). In order to support the planning tasks necessary for the ‘incubation’ of multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary teams to develop CRP bids, following an open competition, in 2006 the NDA funded 11 Preparatory Networks for periods of up to one year. Examples of topics covered by the Preparatory Networks ranged from ‘A life course approach to healthy ageing, frailty and capability’ (Kuh and the New Dynamics of Ageing Preparatory Network Reference Kuh2007), to ‘Older people's experiences and uses of technology’, and ‘The involvement of older people in rural civic society’ (Hennessy and the New Dynamics of Ageing Preparatory Network Reference Hennessy2008).

Each network was provided with around £20,000 to facilitate its key function of developing an application in response to the second call for CRPs in the autumn of 2007. In practice, the networks used the seed-corn funding creatively in various ways, including the identification of datasets for secondary analysis, literature reviews, working with research-user groups, forming reference panels of older people and mounting away days and ‘sandpits’,Footnote ⁴ as well as supporting regular meetings of the network and their secretarial and administrative costs. Apart from the responsible stewardship of public money, the only requirements were to submit a proposal in response to the CRP call after around one year and to produce a short report. It was expected also that the Principal Investigators would have a continuing dialogue with the NDA Programme and its Director during the period of award and that recommendations from the latter on additional expertise required by the network would be taken on board.

It is too early to assess how successful this initiative has been in stimulating high-quality multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research. We must wait to see the outcomes of the CRPs that were eventually funded, but by their own assessments the networks were highly successful. All the reports have been extremely positive about the value of the initiative in forging multi-disciplinary research teams, and there was only one negative comment on the Preparatory Networks approach-from one Principal Investigator about the delay it caused to their project's start. Almost all wanted to continue working as a network beyond the 12 months but the terms of the seed-corn funding prevented that. All 11 Networks submitted a proposal to the second CRP call and all were innovative in part or entirely: ten were short-listed by the multi-disciplinary commissioning panel in January 2008. Of the six CRPs selected following peer review for funding in June 2008, five were from Preparatory Networks. Moreover the unfunded alpha-rated proposals were all network applications. In addition to these major outcomes, the Preparatory Network reports point to five specific benefits of this innovation by the UK RCs.

First, they facilitated new multi-disciplinary collaborations, chiefly by providing room and scope for joint learning. The following extracts from the reports by the Preparatory Network co-ordinators indicate the benefits of the innovative ways of working:Footnote ⁵

Secondly, the Preparatory Networks expanded research capacity in the ageing field and most of their final reports emphasise this contribution. As one co-ordinator wrote, ‘The grant has been extremely valuable, in that it was awarded when the research was at an early stage and the investigators had limited personal track records. It has been effective in enabling us to establish this activity as a research area within our respective groups’. Thirdly, this funding mechanism stimulated new research networks and collaborations. Thus all of the networks grew and developed over 12 months, some after prompts about the need to encompass disciplines not fully represented in the NDA Programme, but mostly through organic growth. Fourthly, there is evidence that the networks expanded the individual research portfolios of some of their members and there was reference to long-lasting benefits. As one co-ordinator wrote, ‘The academic and collaborating partners developed excellent working relationships which, we suspect, will be sustained for the remainder of our working lives’. Fifthly, the Preparatory Network investment embedded user engagement and did so among a broad range of private, voluntary and public organisations. As well as over 130 academic participants in the 11 networks, there were more than 80 representatives from non-academic research-user organisations.

In addition to these key benefits, there were other spin-offs including: a range of knowledge transfer and dissemination activities; co-funding, including with universities and other initiatives such as SPARC; the generation of research funding applications beyond the NDA; and the opportunities for the Programme Director to influence the research portfolio. In sum, the Preparatory Networks initiative contributed substantially to the aims and objectives of the NDA Programme, particularly with regard to the promotion of multi-disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity, ageing research capacity building and user engagement. Although it was not the original intention, several of the networks see themselves as long-term collaborations and the idea of a ‘network of networks’ has been raised to bring together those with a shared interest in enhancing the quality of life of older people.

The evidence to date thus suggests that the support of Preparatory Networks with seed-corn funding is an effective way of developing multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaboration. What more is needed? Funding is obviously critical and the RCs need to ensure that they react appropriately to multi-disciplinary applications through the responsive mode, for which the experience of the NDA Programme with commissioning panels and peer review should be helpful. It is also important to promote multi-disciplinarity in research training, which the present administrative separation of research and training at the postgraduate level militates against – the UK lacks a postdoctoral programme in ageing research. The model provided by the ERA-AGE-supported FLARE (Future Leaders of Ageing Research in Europe) programme, which entails both cross-disciplinary and cross-national mobility, should be examined closely. Such measures would assist in the development of multi-disciplinary ageing research and create a basis for inter-disciplinary working, which again we emphasise is not intended to replace disciplines but to augment them where appropriate.