Learn what Professor Katherine Fiori is working on during her sabbatical in Germany.
The Center for International Education recently caught up with Katherine Fiori, Associate Professor of Psychology at Adelphi University’s Derner Institute and Undergraduate Psychology Department Chairperson., who is on sabbatical this semester and conducting research in Germany.
Here’s her quick update from Berlin:
“While here in Berlin I am collaborating with a researcher at the Deutsche Zentrum für Altersfragen—roughly translated as the German Center for Aging Research. We are working on several projects, including one using a large-scale longitudinal German dataset in which we are examining the differential role of declines in population on changes in social development in late life in urban and rural environments. What we’re finding is that population decline predicts declines in social integration among older adults over time living in rural, but not in urban, regions of the country. This has implications for interventions that are typically developed to target psychological mechanisms, but might be better served addressing population issues at a district level. In addition, we are developing a model of social relations across the lifespan, which posits that time and energy are key resources that can explain the make-up of individuals’ social networks, and that the effects of those networks on health work through key social functions, such as social support, social engagement, and social influence.”