Dr. Anne Martin-Matthews was appointed the Scientific Director of the Institute of Aging on March 1, 2004 for a four-year term. She is a Professor of Family Studies in the School of Social Work and Family Studies at the University of British Columbia. She holds a B.A. in Sociology and Anthropology from Memorial University of Nfld. (1971) and an M.A. (1974) and Ph.D. (1980) in Sociology from McMaster University. Between 1978 and 1998, she was on faculty in the Dept. of Family Studies at the University of Guelph, where she was the founding Director of the Gerontology Research Centre, internationally known for its research on issues of rural aging, family and aging, and work-family balance.
Between 1990 and 1995, Dr. Martin-Matthews was one of four co-Principal Investigators on CARNET: The Canadian Aging Research Network, the first federal Network of Centres of Excellence-funded program to include researchers associated with all three federal funding Councils. She joined the faculty of UBC in January 1998. At UBC, she has held academic administrative positions as Director of the School of Family and Nutritional Sciences (1998-1999), Associate Dean Research and Graduate Studies in the Faculty of Arts (1999-2001) and Dean pro tem of the Faculty of Arts (2001-2002).
Her publications include Widowhood in Later Life (1991) and over 100 peer-reviewed articles and chapters on aging, family and health. Her research has examined formal and informal social support, home care services, intergenerational relations and caregiving, women and aging, work-family balance, aging in rural environments and issues of family structure, including generational age structure and social psychological responses to infertility and its treatment. Her current research is funded through CIHR, SSHRC's Major Collaborative Research Initiatives program, and the Canada Foundation for Innovation.
Dr. Martin-Matthews has been active in the field of gerontology, health and aging in Canada, through her professional associations and as an advisor to local, provincial and federal governments. She is a founding member of the Ontario Gerontology Association; she was Social Sciences Division Chair of the Canadian Association on Gerontology (1983-1985). She was Social Sciences editor for the Canadian Journal on Aging/La revue canadienne du vieillissement (1993-1996), and its Editor-in-Chief (1996-2000). She has served as a member or chair of review and/or advisory committees for the Ontario Mental Health Foundation, the Ontario Ministry of Health, the Gerontology Research Council of Ontario, and the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services; and, at the federal level, for the National Health Research and Development Program (NHRDP), the Health Promotion Directorate of Health and Welfare Canada, the Division of Aging and Seniors of Health Canada, and on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Seniors' Independence Research Program (SIRP) of Health Canada. From 2001-2004 she was the Vice-Chair of the Institute Advisory Board of the Institute of Aging and from 2000-2004 also served as a member of the Research Advisory Council of BC's Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research.
Anne Martin-Matthews' contributions to research and scholarship in social gerontology have been recognized through her election as a Fellow of the (U.S.) Gerontological Society of America in 1992; her receipt of the Distinguished Alumni Award from McMaster University in 1997; a Commemorative Medal for the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, awarded by the Canadian Association on Gerontology in 2002; a Macdonald Institute Centenary Award from the University of Guelph in 2003; and a British Academy Visiting Professorship in 2004.
Term end: March 1, 2008
