The French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC), the Consulate General of France in Hong Kong and Macau, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s Center for Aging Science are thrilled to announce the upcoming conference themed “Ageing and Civic Participation: A Dialogue Between France and Hong Kong”, the third event organized as part of the Nuit des Idées debate series 2025, which will take place on October 23rd, 2025 at HKUST.
Time: 23/10/2025 9:30 – 17:30
Location: Kaisa Group Lecture Theater (IAS LT), Lo Ka Chung Building, Lee Shau Kee Campus, HKUST (campus map)
Please click here to register. RSVP by Friday 17 October 2025. Registration is on a first come, first served basis.
Ageing and civic participation in France and Hong Kong
It has now been 20 years since the World Health Organization first launched its Global Age-friendly Cities (AFC) Project in 2005. Part of a broader effort to address the challenges and opportunities presented by global population ageing, this initiative has aimed to encourage cities worldwide to become more accommodating to their older citizens and optimize their opportunities for health, participation, and security. Within this framework, participation holds a special place as both a goal and a method for inclusion. Against common representations which depict ageing as a retreat from social and civic life, the AFC framework considers older citizens as “the ultimate experts on their own lives,” and aims at empowering them to actively participate in society, may it be through paid employment, voluntary work, or civic inclusion in decision-making.
This one-day conference will bring together and foster exchanges between French and Hong Kong scholars and actors engaged in initiatives and works related to older citizens’ participation. France and Hong Kong, both ageing societies, have indeed actively developed age-friendly cities projects and nurtured reflections about the implementation of participatory frameworks in the context of their own institutional environment and social fabric, as testified by the establishment of the Francophone Network of Age-Friendly Cities (RFVAA) in 2012 in France, and of the Jockey Club Age-Friendly City Project in Hong Kong in 2015. Through their sharing of experiences and expertise, speakers at this conference will dig into a variety of issues related to older citizens’ participation: how has participation been understood and promoted in French and Hong Kong contexts? How can public policies foster older citizens’ participation and inclusion, and what challenges do they face in this regard? How can participatory designs and methods enhance the inclusion of and empower older citizens?
Conference rundown
9:00 – 9:30: Registration
9:30 – 9:55: Opening speeches
- Dr Angela Ng, Assistant Vice-President for Institutional Advancement (Global Engagement)
- Ms Christile Drulhe, Consul General of France in Hong Kong and Macau,
- Ms Grace Chan, Chief Executive, Hong Kong Council of Social Services
- Stuart Gietel-Basten, Associate Director, HKUST Center for Aging Science
- Justine Rochot, Researcher, French Centre for Research on Contemporary China
9:55 – 10:00: Group photo
10:00 – 10:15: Introduction of the Jockey Club Dance Well Project, Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts by the artistic director, Tin Ming LAU.
10:15 – 11:45: SESSION 1: “Ageing and civic participation in international perspectives”
- Jean-Philippe Viriot-Durandal, Professor, Université de Lorraine
- Cheryl Chui, Associate Professor, The University of Hong Kong
- Moderator: Stuart Gietel-Basten, Associate Director, HKUST Center for Aging Science
11:45 – 13:30: Lunch break
13:30 – 15:15: SESSION 2: “Age-friendliness and participation: from diagnostic to implementation”
- Pierre-Olivier Lefebvre*, Executive Director of the Francophone Network of Age-friendly cities
- Ruby Yu, Senior Research Fellow, CUHK Jockey Club Institute of Ageing
- Moderator: Justine Rochot (Researcher, French Centre for Research on Contemporary China)
15:15 – 15:30: Coffee break
15:30 – 17:00: SESSION 3: “Participatory designs and civic inclusion in ageing societies”
- Marion Scheider-Yilmaz, Programme Coordinator, Citizen Design Workshops, International Chair SIÂGE, University of Lorraine.
- Izzy Yi Jian, Assistant Professor, The Education University of Hong Kong
- Moderator: Bridget Tianyin Liu, Assistant Professor, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
17:00 – 17:30: Closing remarks
*The presentation will be conducted in French supported by English translation.
Speakers
SESSION 1
Pr Jean-Philippe VIRIOT-DURANDAL
Jean-Philippe Viriot-Durandal is Professor of Sociology at the University of Lorraine, Chairman of the International Research Chair on Inclusive Societies and Ageing (SiÂge), Vice-President of the Francophone International Network on Age, Citizenship and Socio-Economic Integration (REIACTIS), and Coordinator of the International Research on the Rights of the Elderly in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic (RIDPA). As a researcher at the Center for Research on Expertise, Arts, and Transitions (CREAT), he specialises in public policies and ageing, participatory democracy and decisional processes in the public sphere, as well as participatory methods in the social sciences. Internationally, he was a Fulbright Scholar and a Congressional Fellow of the American Political Science Association, and in this capacity worked on the Senate Committee on Aging. He was also a German Marshall Fund Scholar and Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard. He has also developed international expertise through various collaborations with international organizations, notably the UN (DESA, Focal Point on Aging, MIPAA, etc.) and through the founding in 2006 of the International Research Network on Age, Citizenship, and Socioeconomic Integration (REIACTIS) which he led until 2021. Author of various works including Le pouvoir gris (PUF, 2003), he has written numerous articles on the political and social consequences of aging, and co-edited Droits de vieillir et citoyenneté des aînés. Pour une perspective internationale (The rights to ageing and citizenship of older persons: Towards international perspectives, 2015).
Dr Cheryl CHUI
Cheryl Chui is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work and Social Administration, at the University of Hong Kong. Her scholarship covers three lines of research inquiries: (1) the interface between policy, social innovation, social entrepreneurship, and ecosystem-building; (2) the organisational mechanisms of nonprofits, social enterprises and social businesses in empowering older adults, people with disabilities, and marginalised women; and (3) the advancement of novel community development models through innovative participatory research methods to promote age-friendly and inclusive cities. Her works in these areas have been extensively published in high impact journals. Translating research into impact, her work has contributed to policy changes for social innovation and age-friendly cities, facilitated capacity-building in nonprofits, social enterprises, and inclusive business practices, and enhanced advocacy efficacy for marginalised communities. She is also co-leader of the Innovation in Ageing Steering Group, Global Observatory of Long-term Care (GOLTC), International Long-term Care Policy Network (ILPN), London School of Economics.
Pr Stuart GIETEL-BASTEN
Stuart Gietel-Basten is the Associate Director of the Center for Aging Science, Associate Dean (Research) of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Professor of Social Science and Public Policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Prior to joining HKUST in 2017, he was an Associate Professor of Social Policy at the University of Oxford. He received his PhD in historical demography from the University of Cambridge in 2008. Stuart’s research covers the interplay between changing population dynamics and public/social policy. His research is especially focused on (a) fertility transition; (b) conceptual approaches to ageing; (c) population policy. He is the co-ordinator of the GGS-Asia project, which seeks to run the Generations and Gender Survey in Asian settings – including Hong Kong. In addition to a number of articles in leading journals in demography and related disciplines, he has written two books on population – Why Demography Matters (with Danny Dorling, Polity Press 2018) and The Population Problem in Pacific Asia (Oxford University Press 2019).
SESSION 2
Pierre-Olivier LEFEBVRE
Pierre-Olivier Lefebvre is Executive Director of the Francophone Network of Age-friendly cities (FNAFC), affiliated association to WHO Global Network for Age-friendly Cities and Communities (GNAFCC), since its creation in 2012. Specialised in social gerontology for 30 years and former director of elderly care homes, he leads the FNAFC which currently gathers more than 300 members and supports territorial authorities in integrating ageing-related issues into their public policies at the local level. He also teaches and delivers speeches about longevity and ageing issues in a diversity of territories.
Dr Ruby YU
Dr Ruby Yu is a Senior Research Fellow at the CUHK Jockey Club Institute of Ageing, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Since joining in 2014, she has contributed to key initiatives such as the Jockey Club Age-Friendly City Project and the Cadenza e-Tools for Elder Care. She is currently co-leading two community programs: the Jockey Club Community eHealth Care Project and the “Shining Journey 50+” Women Wellness Programme, both of which promote self-management and integrated care for older adults. Dr Yu’s research focuses on validating the WHO’s concept of healthy ageing and intrinsic capacity in Chinese populations. She examines the trajectories and determinants of intrinsic capacity and frailty, and their impact on ageing outcomes. Her work also explores how neighbourhood environments influence frailty and functional decline among older adults, and includes the development and evaluation of interventions to promote healthy ageing. She serves as an editorial board member of the Journal of Frailty & Aging.
Dr Justine Rochot
Justine Rochot is a researcher at the French Center for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC, Hong Kong) and Deputy Chief-Editor of the journal China Perspectives. A sociologist, her research focuses on ageing, retirement, life stages and intergenerational relationships in contemporary Chinese societies. Her PhD, defended in EHESS Paris in 2019, analysed the social lives of contemporary Chinese urban retirees, born in the early years of the Mao era and first cohorts of one-child parents. As a Chiang Ching-Kuo postdoctoral fellow (2020-2022) and a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Sociology of Academia Sinica (2022-2023), her research turned to the analysis of lifelong learning initiatives, volunteering activities of older citizens, as well as of the impact of the digitalization of societies on experiences of ageing. She’s also engaged in the RIDPA Projet (REIACTIS, IReSP/CNSA), an international comparative research on the rights of older people during the Covid-19 pandemic (RIDPA, REIACTIS).
SESSION 3
Dr Izzy Yi JIAN
Dr Izzy Yi Jian is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Policy Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong, and the Vice President & Director of Happy Ageing Lab Foundation. Dr Dian came from Architecture background and earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Building and Real Estate, and Research Institute of Sustainable Urban Development (RISUD), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Before joining EdUHK, she worked as PTVL in School of Design, HK PolyU, Postdoctoral Fellow and Project Manager at Happy Ageing Lab, School of Architecture, CUHK, Postdoctoral Fellow at Public Design Lab, School of Design, HKPolyU, and Ernst Mach Global Research Fellow at the Department of Geography and Regional Research, the University of Vienna. Her research and teaching interests include spatial justice, privatisation of public open space, inclusive/ age-friendly design, community engagement and geomedia.
Dr Marion SCHEIDER-YILMAZ
Marion Scheider-Yilmaz is a sociologist and urban planner interested in the intersections between aging, disability, and social participation. Her PhD thesis in sociology (University of Lorraine, 2022) explored the dynamics of citizenship and decision-making among older adults and people with disabilities within consultative advisory boards in France. She recently joined the International Research Chair on Inclusive Societies and Ageing (SIÂGE) at the University of Lorraine as Programme Coordinator for Citizen Design Workshops. Before that, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Grenoble Alpes as part of an ANR/DFG project, in collaboration with the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Since the beginning of her academic career, Marion Scheider-Yilmaz has strived to build bridges between research on aging and on disability, in order to develop cross-disciplinary knowledge on the socio-spatial inclusion of older adults and people with disabilities. To this end, she joined the editorial board of the journal Retraite et Société as well as the ethics and scientific committee of the Observatoire Handéo (the French National Disability Observatory). Furthermore, she has a particular interest in participatory approaches involving older adults and people with disabilities. She initiated a participatory approach with older adults, which is now being implemented in eight other regions in France by a team of social scientists. She is also co-leader of the “Place and Community” working group within the framework of the COST Action “Participatory Approaches with Older People” (PAAR-net) and President of the “Mamies Gâteaux” (Grannies Cookies) social initiative in Strasbourg.
Dr Bridget Tianyin LIU
Dr Liu is Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Social Sciences at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She was trained in cognitive psychology, gerontology, and art therapy. Through fieldwork with older people and collaboration with service providers from various sectors, Dr Liu recognised the gap between the mental health needs of older people and the availability of accessible services. With an interdisciplinary background, Dr Liu aims to employ a range of scientific methods to improve the mental wellness of older adults. This is built on three interrelated lines of inquiry: (1) using bottom-up approaches to understand the internalised stigma of mental illness and internalised ageism experienced by older people; (2) establishing evidence of innovative non-pharmacological interventions, especially arts-based intervention, for at-risk older people through rigorous research (e.g., randomised controlled trials); and (3) applying a network approach to understanding psychopathology, in particular, common mental disorders such as depression and anxiety. Dr Liu believes these inquiries are relevant for and generalisable to other marginalised communities at risk for mental health problems.
About the “Nuit des idées” debate series
This one-day conference is part of a series of event organised for the 2025 Night of Ideas debate series. Launched in 2016 by the Institut Français, the “Nuit des Idées” (Night of Ideas) is an emblematic yearly event organised worldwide by French Embassies and Consulates. Its 10th edition is celebrated throughout 2025 on all five continents around the theme of “Empowerment” (“pouvoir agir”). This topic is an invitation to reflect on the ways in which societies can take effective action on major contemporary global issues, to explore the participation of individuals and civil society in public decision-making, and to provide a platform for debate on various related topics.
Please click here to register to the event.
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