Ariela Lowenstein is Full Professor, Graduate Department of Aging Studies and Head, Center for Research and Study of Aging, Faculty of Social Welfare and Health Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel. She also heads a Center of Excellence on Aging and Migration.

She established the Department of Aging Studies nine years ago and headed it for five years. She created the Center on Aging 15 years ago and is heading it since then. Within the Centre, she has a close research collaboration with scholars from Israel as well as a wide international collaboration with colleagues from Europe, the US, Canada, and Latin America.

She publishes extensively on aging issues in prestigious journals, book chapters, monographs, and training manuals, having more than 150 publications. She has written two books in Hebrew and is a co-editor of three books in English. She is the recipient of numerous competitive research grants like from the EU, the Israeli-Science Foundation, the Israeli National Insurance Institute, and the US-Israel Bi-National Foundation as well as prestigious scholarships and awards. With colleagues, she conducted the First National Survey on Elder Abuse and Neglect in Israel as well as a large qualitative study in this area focusing on older women. She served as the Research Coordinator of a large scale 3 years EU project (OASIS- “Old Age and Autonomy: The Role of Service Systems and Intergenerational Solidarity”) with colleagues from Norway, Germany, England, and Spain.

Currently, she is the Israeli principal investigator of a large US-Israel study, funded by the Bi-National Science Foundation on comparing family relations in Israel and the US, with collaborating researchers from the Andrews Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California and the Social Research Center at the University of Michigan. She has extensive experience as an editorial board member for a number of aging journals and for various foundations (e.g. German Israel Foundation, American National Science Foundation, and WHO). Shortly a special issue of Gerontology (Hebrew) edited by her on the topic of “Aging and the Holocaust” will be published. Recently she lectured at the UN Committee on Aging on issues of elder abuse and neglect. She has been just invited by the EU Commission for an expert hearing on elder abuse and by the UN Social Policy Division to an international expert panel on ‘intergenerational solidarity’ where she was actively engaged in formulating policy recommendations.

Lowenstein is reputed as one of the leading national and international experts in social gerontology. She is the past chair of the European Behavioral, Social Science and Research Section of the International Association of Gerontology – European Region, and served for five years as chair of the Israeli Gerontological Society, where she recently received a prize for life achievement. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and a fellow of the World Demographic Association. She is a board member of the International Federation on Aging (IFA) and member of its nominations committee, European Regional representative of the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse (INPEA), and Board Member as an International Fellow of the National Institute for the Care of the Elderly (NICE) University of Toronto, Canada. She was recently nominated as Visiting Professor at King’s College London, Institute of Gerontology, England.

She also serves on various Israeli governmental and local agencies as consultant, member of various national committees and an advisor for policy. She is the incoming Co-Chair of the Council to the Retiree Party and Advisor to the Minister; she is Chair of a Committee on Elder Abuse created by ESHEL (Association for Planning & Development of Services for the Aged in Israel) and the Chair of a newly established scientific advisory committee to help the Foundation for the Benefits of Holocaust Survivors in Israel.

She has a Masters of Public Administration from New York University, N.Y. and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Her research areas are: intergenerational family relations, elders’ quality of life, family caregiving, elder abuse, policy development and service evaluation, holocaust survivors, theory building, gerontological education.