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Guest lecture by Prof. Dr. Dario Spini “Vulnerability Across the Life Course: The Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research LIVES”

6/13/2012
In his guest lecture, Prof. Dr. Dario Spini, Director of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) LIVES at Lausanne University introduced the research priority on “Overcoming Vulnerability Across the Life Course”, which currently consists of 14 projects with about 130 scientists at 11 institutions.
In the photo (from left to right): Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Hans-Peter Blossfeld, Prof. Dr. Dario Spini 
The research and competence center under the direction of the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva, NCCR LIVES, was presented in Prof. Spini’s lecture to focus especially on the “vulnerability” of younger and older adults. The overall 14 projects of this research priority are grouped around the two main research areas of “critical life events and their impact on the life course” and “individual life trajectories and their interconnections.” Regarding its content, the project deals, for example, with problems like coping with the loss of a life partner in old age as well as studies concerning the processes of integration and special challenges for migrants in relation to integration. Besides the concentrated and highly informative presentation of the competence center’s thematic approach, Prof. Spini also reported on another former, already completed project directed by him, which examined wartime experiences and traumatization in the former Yugoslavia (TRACES). Prof. Spini introduced some examples of the methodically innovative procedures which had been designed for TRACES to graphically visualize subjective spatial perceptions. In his presentation, Prof. Spini emphasized the areas of overlap between NCCR LIVES and NEPS and that there are possibilities to cooperate in the future.