IAFOR > AGen > AGen2018 > Speakers

Speakers

The Asian Conference on Aging & Gerontology 2018 (AGen2018) is a multidisciplinary conference held concurrently with The Asian Conference on the Social Sciences 2018 (ACSS2018) and The Asian Conference on Sustainability, Energy & the Environment (ACSEE2018). Keynote, Featured and Spotlight Speakers will provide a variety of perspectives from different academic and professional backgrounds. Registration for any one of these conferences permits attendance in all three within the event.

This page provides information about presenters. For details of presentations and other programming, please visit the Programme page.

  • Dr Megumi Rosenberg
    Dr Megumi Rosenberg
    World Health Organization (WHO), Japan
  • Professor William Baber
    Professor William Baber
    Kyoto University Graduate School of Management, Japan
  • Professor Hiroshi Ishida
    Professor Hiroshi Ishida
    University of Tokyo, Japan
  • Kathryn M. Lavender
    Kathryn M. Lavender
    National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA)
  • Lowell Sheppard
    Lowell Sheppard
    HOPE International Development Agency, Japan
  • Dr James W. McNally
    Dr James W. McNally
    University of Michigan, USA & NACDA Program on Aging
  • Dr Sela V. Panapasa
    Dr Sela V. Panapasa
    University of Michigan, USA
  • Dr Philip Sugai
    Dr Philip Sugai
    Doshisha Business School, Japan

Previous Speakers

View details of speakers at past AGen conferences via the links below.

Dr Megumi Rosenberg
World Health Organization (WHO), Japan

Biography

Dr Megumi Rosenberg has been a Technical Officer for the World Health Organization (WHO) Centre for Health Development in Kobe, Japan, since 2009. She conducts research in the areas of health metrics, urban health, health equity and ageing. She also provides technical assistance on these matters to national and local health officials in WHO Member States. Her recent work includes the Global Report on Urban Health (2016) and the Age-friendly City core indicator guide (2015). Previously, she was a Senior Researcher in public health and disasters at the Southern California Injury Prevention Research Centre of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She received her undergraduate degree in liberal arts from the International Christian University in Tokyo, and her master and doctorate degrees in public health from the UCLA School of Public Health.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Health Across the Lifecourse
Professor William Baber
Kyoto University Graduate School of Management, Japan

Biography

Will Baber has combined education with business throughout his career, teaching business students in Japan and Europe and working in economic development for the State of Maryland and language services in Washington, DC. In his work he has frequently encountered cross cultural conflicts and synergies. He studies these issues as an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Management of Kyoto University. His research interests include cross-cultural adaptation and the impact of expatriates on the workplace.

Featured Workshop Presentation (2018) | What you see and What you do
Professor Hiroshi Ishida
University of Tokyo, Japan

Biography

Hiroshi Ishida is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Tokyo. He served as the Director of the Institute of Social Sciences and the Director of the Center of Social Research and Data Archives, at the University of Tokyo, from 2012 to 2015. He received his PhD in sociology from Harvard University, conducted post-doctoral research at Nuffield College and St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and held positions of Assistant and Associate Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. He was a Visiting Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan and a Visiting Fellow of Sociology at Yale University.

Professor Ishida’s research interests include comparative social stratification and mobility, school-to-work transition, and social inequality over the life course. He is the author of Social Mobility in Contemporary Japan (Stanford University Press) and the co-editor with David Slater of Social Class in Contemporary Japan (Routledge). His work has been published in a number of journals and edited volumes, including American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, European Sociological Review, and Japanese Sociological Review.

Professor Ishida was the president of the Japanese Association of Mathematical Sociology from 2011 to 2013, and currently serves as the secretary/treasurer of the Research Committee on Social Stratification of the International Sociological Association. From 2005 to 2010, he was the editor-in-chief of Social Science Japan Journal, an international journal on social science research on Japan published by Oxford University Press. He is the principal investigator of the Japanese Life Course Panel Surveys, funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. He presently serves on the international editorial board of several journals, including British Journal of Sociology, European Sociological Review, and Social Forces. He is currently the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) Official Representative for the University of Tokyo.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Health Across the Lifecourse

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | Easts Meets West – Healthy, Active and Beautiful Aging in Asia
Kathryn M. Lavender
National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA)

Biography

Kathryn joined the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (NACDA) team in November 2017 as project manager. She is involved with day to day operations including data deposits, restricted-use data agreements, data user requests, as well as long-term planning of NACDA activities in the research community.

Before transitioning to NACDA, Kathryn Lavender came to ICPSR from UofM Dearborn as a co-op student, and accepted a full-time position after graduating with her degree in economics. She has been involved in many areas of ICPSR, from curating data across different projects and supervising curation staff to event planning with the summer internship program. As of this April, Kathryn has been an official ICPSR staff member for 10 years.

Featured Workshop Presentation (2018) | Locating Data for Research: Data Collections and Resources for Thesis Writing, Teaching, and Grant Development for the Social Sciences and the Environment

This presentation is co-sponsored by IAFOR and The University of Michigan

Lowell Sheppard
HOPE International Development Agency, Japan

Biography

Lowell Sheppard is Asia Pacific Director of the HOPE International Development Agency, an organisation that works to improve the supply of basic human necessities to the world’s extreme poor. Aside from his 25-year involvement with HOPE, Lowell has dedicated much of his life to social and environmental improvement projects throughout the world. He was the Chairman of the Whose Earth initiative in the UK, and was the founding Chairman of Novimost, a non-government organisation responding to the needs caused by war in the Balkans. He was also CEO of one of the UK’s largest youth charities and an executive member of Spring Harvest, an annual Christian festival which attracts more than 60,000 people each Easter, and raises more than one million dollars for charities every year. A fellow of the Royal Geographic Society, Mr Sheppard is the author of six books, which reflect his diverse intellectual interests and life experience. His latest book, Boys Becoming Men, examines the importance of rites of passage, including adventures, for children becoming adults. Lowell is a noted public speaker, and has given lectures at both undergraduate and postgraduate level on Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability, and he is a former vice-chairman of the CSR Committee for the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan.

Keynote Presentation (2018) | Surviving and Thriving: In Pursuit of a Sustainable World – A Unique and Personal Reflection
Dr James W. McNally
University of Michigan, USA & NACDA Program on Aging

Biography

Dr James W. McNally is the Director of the NACDA Program on Aging, a data archive containing over 1,500 studies related to health and the aging lifecourse. He currently does methodological research on the improvement and enhancement of secondary research data and has been cited as an expert authority on data imputation. Dr McNally has directed the NACDA Program on Aging since 1998 and has seen the archive significantly increase its holdings with a growing collection of seminal studies on the aging lifecourse, health, retirement and international aspects of aging. He has spent much of his career addressing methodological issues with a specific focus on specialized application of incomplete or deficient data and the enhancement of secondary data for research applications. Dr McNally has also worked extensively on issues related to international aging and changing perspectives on the role of family support in the later stages of the aging lifecourse.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Health Across the Lifecourse
Featured Workshop Presentation (2018) | Locating Data for Research: Data Collections and Resources for Thesis Writing, Teaching, and Grant Development for the Social Sciences and the Environment

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Methodologies for the Collection of Comparative Community Level Public Health Data: Obtaining Powerful and Statistically Meaningful Findings for Small Populations
Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | Easts Meets West – Healthy, Active and Beautiful Aging in Asia
Dr Sela V. Panapasa
University of Michigan, USA

Biography

Dr Sela V. Panapasa studies family support and intergenerational exchanges among aged Pacific Islanders living in the US and Pacific region. Her work examines changes in elderly living arrangements and headship status in response to demographic and socioeconomic change. Her interests include family demography, race and ethnicity, measuring health disparities and comparative studies.

Featured Presentation (2018) | Presentation details will be announced here shortly

Previous IAFOR Presentations

Featured Presentation (ACE2017) | Teaching Health Equity at the Community Level: Engaging Faith Based Organizations in Teaching Community Based Nutritional and Health Behaviors
Dr Philip Sugai
Doshisha Business School, Japan

Biography

Dr Sugai joined the Global MBA faculty at Doshisha Business School as a full-time faculty member in September 2013. He currently teaches Marketing, eMarketing, Marketing Research, and Sustainable & Responsible Marketing. Dr Sugai is also a Visiting Professor at Stanford University, where he teaches an undergraduate course on Innovation in Japan at the Stanford Overseas campus in Kyoto. Prior to joining the Doshisha University faculty, Dr Sugai taught at the International University of Japan in Niigata from January 2002, where he also served as Associate Dean and Dean of the IUJ Business School for six years.

Dr Sugai is the author of two books, The Value Plan and The Six Immutable Laws of Mobile Business (John Wiley & Sons), and has published case studies on KITKAT Japan, Australia’s AGL, Hatsune Miku and Walt Disney Internet Group, all of which are available through the Harvard Business School Publishing case study portal. He received his doctorate from Waseda University’s Graduate School of Global Information and Telecommunications Studies, and his MBA in Marketing and Operations Management from New York University’s Stern School of Business. He has worked as a marketing executive at American Express, Muze and Lightningcast, and currently serves as a marketing advisor and marketing strategy consultant to companies both in Japan and globally.

Featured Presentation (2018) | Towards a Universal Standard of Value through Blockchain

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Establishing a Value Mindset