Dr Maya Chew

This paper examines how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reshaped the European Union’s energy security and foreign policy through the REPowerEU agenda. It argues that REPowerEU is more than a crisis-response mechanism: it represents an attempt to align energy diversification, decarbonisation and geopolitical strategy within a more coordinated EU framework. The paper assesses the early dividends of this approach, including reduced dependence on Russian gas, expanded energy partnerships, and the emergence of collective mechanisms such as the EU Energy Platform. At the same time, it highlights the challenges of managing new dependencies on LNG suppliers, critical raw materials, transit routes and regional geopolitical actors. The paper concludes that REPowerEU’s long-term success depends on whether the EU can institutionalise energy diplomacy as a core component of its foreign and security policy while maintaining its climate ambitions and strategic autonomy.

This report analyzes the post-Assad geopolitical reconfiguration in the Middle East, emphasizing how energy security and infrastructural diplomacy have replaced norm-driven foreign policies. Key developments include the diminishing regional influence of Iran and Russia, the formal disbandment of the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), and a transactional, stability-first approach by Western powers prioritizing strategic energy corridors stretching from Iraqi Kurdistan to the Mediterranean.

This poster offers a reflexive methodological account of the River of Life (RoL) as an arts-based, participant-led approach for researching ageing in culturally and politically constrained contexts. Drawing on an interview study with older trans women in Malaysia (n=29), I exemplify how RoL can be treated not merely as a visual prompt but also as an analytic object in its own right when read polytextually, i.e., an analysis drawn across drawing, interview talk, and fieldnotes. A six-stage River of Life Polytextual Thematic Analysis (RoL-PTA) workflow is outlined, grounded in reflexive thematic analysis, and introduces a polytemporal reading framework that attends to event/biographical time, narrative time, and historical/cohort time as they co-exist on a single page. The poster also examines how the method is shaped by the relational field of research: high power-distance interactional norms, the affective politics of drawing, the researcher’s insider–outsider positionality, and the ethical demands of working with identifiable visual artefacts. Finally, it provides practical guidance on adapting RoL-PTA to global ageing research, particularly for marginalised groups whose life courses are shaped by stigma, legal precarity, and culturally specific relationships to time, kinship, and place. This poster was awarded the 2026 British Society of Gerontology Stirling Prize.

This report, produced as part of the APPG on Fair Value in the Food Supply Chain and the Rural Policy Group, examines farm-based food production and fair value within Surrey's food supply chain. It provides a county-level analysis of the structure and role of Surrey's farming sector, including production, imports and outputs, labour, contractual arrangements, and relationships between primary producers and retailers.Drawing on evidence from farmers and sector stakeholders, the report explores how value is created, distributed and recognised across the food supply chain. It highlights the significant but often under-recognised economic, environmental and social contributions made by Surrey's farming community, while identifying the challenges farmers face in securing fair and sustainable returns for their work.The report argues that achieving fair value requires greater public awareness, stronger cross-sector collaboration, and targeted government support. It concludes with a series of policy recommendations aimed at addressing power imbalances within local and national food supply chains and strengthening the long-term sustainability and resilience of the UK's farming sector.

This study analyses Surrey County Council’s strategic repositioning to enhance inward investment amid post-Brexit and pandemic-related economic volatility, based on 18 months of mixed-methods research. Findings indicate that high-quality, sustainable investment requires reformed local governance, robust cross-sectoral engagement, and a unified regional brand to drive innovation and place-based growth.

Situated against the indicators of key national and county-based data, the Unseen Surrey report outlines the negative impacts of disadvantage, the overstretch of key systems, and risk factors that increase the chances of marginalisation of young people who are excluded from education, employment or training. Equally, the myriad of stakeholders interviewed, the structures examined, and the data analysed highlighted how national and local authorities, further education providers, employers, mentors and the voluntary sector can together reverse Surrey’s story of missed opportunities.Whilst Surrey has historically been a high-performing authority in terms of NEET (as well as the more complex ‘Not Known’ category) the report indicates problematic and possibly widening gaps that need to be addressed swiftly, materially, financially, and sustainably. The report concludes with Existing Challenges to NEETs in Surrey: structural but not insurmountable obstacles; and many Pathways to Progress; capable of enhancing and increasing the range of opportunities, skills and personal development of young people, supporting them in transforming them from ‘not in’ to definitively ‘in’ education, employment and/or training.

Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations play a critical role in local public service systems, at both national and local levels. Hugely varied in type, they are broadly similar in their overarching civil society objectives and represent trusted, locally rooted entities, frequently reaching people and places that statutory services struggle to serve. Over the last decade, and especially since COVID-19, demand for VCSE support has risen steeply, while becoming more complex, driven by a range of factors including cost-of-living pressures, health and social care backlogs, diminishment in statutory service provisions, and widening inequalities. The environment remains volatile. Core and flexible funding have not kept pace, and the volunteering bedrock of VCSEs has eroded in some areas. Equally, policy changes (including the Social Value Act, the Social Value Model, and the Procurement Act) and emerging provisions (e.g. the VCSE Business Hub) have improved the environment for VCSE participation in public contracts, while local commissioning practices and payment timeliness remain key.

This chapter examines how older nyah or Malaysian trans women negotiate ageing, health, and gender presentation within a restrictive religio-political and sociocultural context shaped by cisheteronormativity and political Islam. Challenging assumptions that trans identities are contingent upon youth or continuous medical transition, it argues that embodied gender identity does not expire in later life but evolves through pragmatic adaptation. Drawing on queer cultural gerontology, life course perspectives, and queer temporalities, the study employs the River of Life visual narrative method alongside semi-structured interviews with thirty nyah aged 40 and above. The findings highlight how later life transitions, such as discontinuing hormones, revising gender-affirming surgeries, and recalibrating visibility, reflect agency, resilience, and shifting priorities around health, safety, and survival. By centering non-Western later life trans experiences, this chapter contributes to more culturally situated and inclusive understandings of trans ageing.

As part of Centre for Ageing and Biographical Studies [CABS] 30th anniversary celebrations, the panel session on the 3rd October 2025 organised in collaboration with ERA: the Emerging Researchers in Ageing Committee of the British Society of Gerontology and co-led by Sam Toolan [CABS, The Open University] and Dr Amy Prescott [Brunel University of London and ERA Chair] explored the future of gerontological research, policy, and practice against the backdrop of global demographic change. It brought together emerging leaders to identify critical priorities for action and innovation. The discussion considered how the field can confront new challenges and harness opportunities to influence how societies support ageing populations in meaningful and sustainable ways.